


At The End

by ancientroots



Series: At Points In Time [1]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Chihiro's age has been revised down one year, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 06:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4776680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientroots/pseuds/ancientroots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU from the Inter-High:</p><p>Nijimura Shuzo returns to Japan after his father's death to attend Rakuzan as a second-year student. He finds his kouhai in a mess of their own making. But Shuzo has never had a philosophy of interfering in Akashi's problems, and his father's death has left Shuzo's own family with issues of their own.</p><p> </p><p>A shrug. Nijimura-san leaned against the back of his seat. “What happened at Teiko, happened. I can’t do anything about it. And I have enough on my plate right now.”</p><p>“Your family,” Seijuro said.</p><p>Direct, final. “Don’t even go there.”</p><p>A command. Seijuro narrowed his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At The End

**Author's Note:**

> (30/12/2015 A/N: Some changes have been made in light of the sequel.)
> 
> Refers in some way to two other works:
> 
> Akashi and Other Animals by half_sleeping  
> The Well-Trodden Road to Nationals by half_sleeping, hifi, jetsam, and readerofasaph (Chapter 3)
> 
> Neither of these needs to be read in order to understand the story, but I would recommend reading them anyway. They're well-written and offer amazing insights into Akashi's psychology.

AT THE END 

Shuzo hadn’t been sure what to expect. Entering Rakuzan as a second-year student on a basketball scholarship was normal enough, he supposed. Rakuzan made its reputation partly through its recruitment of talent. He hadn’t been sure that he measured up, given that he hadn’t played in a team for over two years. America had good street ball, but Shuzo had been too busy looking after his siblings and worrying about his father’s recovery from his illness to join a school team. Still, he had passed muster. He had gotten a scholarship. He was going to school in Japan and playing basketball again. 

He just hadn’t known what exactly to expect of Rakuzan’s famed basketball team. They had won the Interhigh, he knew that much. Akashi hadn’t even played, the arrogant brat. And now they were midway through the Winter Cup. Going up against Shutoku today. The rest of what Shuzo knew, or kind of knew, he filed under ‘rumours’ in his head because the vocabulary was just too exaggerated and fangirlish to countenance in any other way. Rakuzan was one of the kings, the oldest and strongest. They had three of the Uncrowned Kings, and their captain was Akashi Seijuro, the former captain of the Generation of Miracles. Akashi had the Emperor’s Eye; when he exerted its power, his eyes went heterochromatic and he gained the ability to see the future. It had Shuzo scratching a hand over his head in a fit of mental exhaustion. Really.  
   
It had gotten to the point that he had simply decided to come and check out the rumours for himself. School started in a week’s time, after all. Might as well take the opportunity to scout his soon-to-be teammates.  
   
The stadium loomed large in front of him. He unzippered his jacket as he passed through into the heated reception area. Fished out his phone from his pocket as he began making his way to the hall where the Shutoku-Rakuzan match was supposed to be taking place.  
   
He considered texting. Then decided to forego it – straight-up conversation was always best – and pressed the speed dial button.  
   
The call picked up almost immediately. Tatsuya said, “Shuu. We’re in the hall already. Second floor.”  
   
“We?”  
   
“Atsushi is with me. We decided to watch the match together.”  
   
“You mean you decided to watch the match together, and Murasakibara decided to stay for the sweets.”  
   
“You have unending faith in my charm.”  
   
“If I say yes, can I count on getting laid tonight?”  
   
A girl walking past him, with short brown hair and in a sailor’s uniform, tensed and glanced back at him, a flush high on her cheeks. Shuzo kept his expression blank.  
   
Tatsuya laughed softly. “I haven’t seen you in person for months, Shuu. If we were going out, you wouldn’t need to flatter me to be assured of sex.”  
   
A pause. Shuzo listened with half an ear to the soothing, familiar sound of Tatsuya’s breathing over the phone as he scanned a map of the stadium that had been pasted onto a large pillar in the middle of the corridor. There. Hall B. Up the stairs. “Are any of them there? Besides Murasakibara.”  
   
“Kise is here. Kuroko too. They’re playing afterwards. I don’t see Aomine. And Shutoku and Rakuzan have arrived, so Midorima and Akashi are here too. Why? Feeling nervous?”  
   
It was always a relief to see Tatsuya. His friend – one-time boyfriend – had visited over the summer break, but he hadn’t been able to stay for long. Shuzo had missed him. Seeing him again was like having a missing part of himself, not necessary to survival but necessary to full happiness, suddenly slot back into place. Without warning. Without friction. Without condition.  
   
Shuzo jumped up the remaining two steps into the seating area on the second floor of the large sports hall, pocketed his phone, and smiled.  
   
Tatsuya returned the smile. Shuzo let his eyes rake up his friend’s body, hot as he remembered in a loose black shirt and jeans.  
   
Murasakibara said, flatly. “Senpai.”  
   
Shuzo looked at his former kouhai. The kid towered even more than he had back in middle school. Understandable, of course. And expected. Still, it was surprising to see in person. “Murasakibara. It’s been a long time. Good to see you.”  
   
“You know Muro-chin.”  
   
“We met in America,” Tatsuya said. “Did I never tell you, Atsushi?” A pause. “You call him senpai but not me?”  
   
The giant brat looked down at the bag of chips in his hand, and picked up a fistful. “Are you back to play basketball, senpai?”  
   
“You should answer Tatsuya, kid.”  
   
“Muro-chin is Muro-chin. That’s why I don’t call him senpai.”  
   
Shuzo gave up. His kouhai were impossible to understand at the best of times. And anyway, Tatsuya’s expression was one of fond exasperation rather than real annoyance. He answered. “My family’s moved back, yes.” His heart gave a little frozen twitch at that, as it always did and probably always would. Because it was inevitable; returning home would always be associated with the fact that his father was now dead. “I’m attending school here now. And playing basketball. I might see you at Nationals if I make the team.”  
   
“Rakuzan,” Murasakibara said.  
   
“How did you know?”  
   
“Senpai is senpai,” Murasakibara said, shrugging his massive shoulders. “The game’s starting now.”  
   
Both teams had begun lining up in the middle of the court. Shuzo decided to ignore the strange pronouncement for now, and went up to the railing, crossing his arms on the cold steel. Tatsuya moved closer to him, not touching, but near enough that Shuzo was intensely aware of his presence. Fuck. It really had been too long since he’d gotten laid.   
   
Tatsuya was smiling.  
   
Shuzo kicked his foot gently. “Screw you.”  
   
“We’ll see about that.”  
   
Murasakibara munched particularly loud on his next fistful of chips.  
   
   
   
To be honest, Tatsuya had been worried about what Shuzo would think when he came to see Rakuzan’s game against Shutoku. Not that Tatsuya knew much himself about Akashi Seijuro or about Rakuzan, having moved back to Japan only a few months before. But he had gotten hints from Atsushi. Unpleasant hints.  
   
Halfway through the game, Tatsuya glanced back from watching Akashi’s first use of Emperor’s Eye to check Shuzo’s reaction.  
   
His friend’s fingers were white on the railing. His face was unreadable. But his eyes were clear, and focused on the game. Tatsuya knew from experience that it would be a bad idea to disturb him now. He went back to watching.  
   
Throughout Atsushi’s explanations of Emperor’s Eye, Shutoku’s short-lived comeback, and Akashi’s final winning shot, Shuzo was quiet. At the end, when Akashi refused to shake Midorima’s hand, was when he finally made a sound. A short, sharp exhalation of breath.  
   
“Shuzo,” Tatsuya ventured, after a moment.  
   
“I’m going to speak to my kouhai,” Shuzo announced. His tone was perfectly pleasant, but Atsushi flinched. “I’ll be back in time for the end of the Kaijo-Seirin match. If Kagami uses that ridiculous Zone of his, text me. I want to see it with my own eyes.” And then he left, as directly as he had come. Shuzo always gave off an aura of complete indifference. As if he believed he deserved to exist, to come and go as he pleased, and no one had a right to say otherwise.  
   
After he had gone, Tatsuya looked at Atsushi. Atsushi looked dourly back. He was on his tenth bag of chips now. “Are you going to follow him, Muro-chin?”  
   
Tatsuya tilted his head away to hide his smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Atsushi. But I do need to go to the washroom. Please text me if you think that Taiga is going to use his Zone. I’ll come back immediately.”  
   
Atsushi grunted.  
   
Tatsuya hadn’t practically grown up on the streets for nothing. He found it inordinately easy to follow Shuzo without being seen. A good opportunity to both see for himself what had upset his friend about the match, and get an insight into how the Rakuzan team was going to function with their newest starter. Because however good the rest of the team was, Tatsuya had every confidence that Shuzo would be in the starting lineup by the time the Spring Tournament rolled around.  
   
Shuzo secured his intended conversation with his kouhai through very simple means. By standing in front of the Rakuzan locker room.  
   
The Rakuzan coach took one look at him and snorted. “Come to check out your new team, kid? It’s too early for that. You’re in the club, no doubt about that, but the team is selected in try-outs at the beginning of term.”  
   
“I understand,” Shuzo said, perfectly polite. His gaze was on Akashi, who had stopped just a few feet away from him. From his vantage point from a nearby pillar – which was rather undignified and uninventive, true, but the only hiding place Tatsuya had been able to find on short notice – Tatsuya was unable to see Akashi’s expression. “I’m interested in speaking to Akashi-kun.”  
   
“Sei-chan, do you know him?” asked one of the Uncrowned Kings. The one with the black hair and floppy way of moving. Mibuchi Reo, Tatsuya remembered, from his other teammates’ reminiscing of their middle school days.  
   
Akashi gave little reaction. “Nijimura-san. It has been a while.”  
   
A long moment, and then the coach sighed loudly. “Fine then. We’ll give you a moment. Don’t take too long.”  
   
Akashi nodded. The rest of his teammates filed inside the locker room.  
   
Akashi and Shuzo eyed each other.  
   
Tatsuya’s neck was beginning to hurt from craning around the pillar. He rubbed his hand over the sore muscles.  
   
Shuzo crossed his arms. “Captain Akashi.” Tatsuya blinked. Contrary to the chewing out he had been expecting, after seeing Shuzo’s increasing tension throughout the match, the tone of the greeting was warm rather than angry. Almost affectionate. Then it hardened. “What was that? In the game just now.”  
   
“We won,” Akashi said.  
   
“I’ve never seen you act like that before.”  
   
“I fail to understand your meaning.”  
   
“Like an imperious, controlling, manipulative, self-harming bastard,” Shuzo said, easily enough that Tatsuya had to control a flinch. “Making Kagami kneel, really? Threatening to gouge your own eyes out. I could tell you even meant it.”  
   
“I did mean it. But I would not have had to. That we would win was a foregone conclusion.”  
   
A pause. “I heard that you’d gotten worse. All of you. That last match you had as a team. 111-11. Really.”  
   
“Tetsuya has been fixing us,” Akashi noted. There was no trace of bitterness in his tone. “If you planned on doing so as well, you are too late. Tetsuya plans to fix me in the upcoming finals match. If he gets past Ryota.”  
   
“Fix you,” Shuzo said.  
   
Standing like that, the two of them, opposite each other with similar controlled expressions and tones of voice, Tatsuya had to wonder if a qualification for being captain of the Teiko basketball team was the ability to exude indifference. He let his gaze move slowly over his friend’s lithe form, accentuated by the dark grey tank top he was wearing under his open blue jacket. Well, maybe hotness was a factor too. And then he realized that that would include Akashi, and felt his brain fry a little.  
   
Akashi said, “You do not believe I need fixing.”  
   
“You’re you,” Shuzo said, in what was probably an unconscious imitation of what Atsushi had said barely an hour ago. “You need a lecture, sure, and laps. And a therapist. What do you think? You threatened to gouge your eyes out. And meant it. But no, you don’t need fixing by a kid your age who knows next to nothing about you. What the fuck? Did you brats go absolutely crazy after I left?”  
   
There was a short silence. Cold, and heavy. Tatsuya’s phone buzzed in his pocket. Atsushi. He blinked in surprise. It had been five minutes since the game started. Taiga couldn’t be using Zone already. He checked the message.  
   
Atsushi: I’m hungry. Bring back sweets, Muro-chin.  
   
Tatsuya bit his tongue on a snort. Of course.  
   
Akashi said, “You are joining Rakuzan. This is the first I have heard of it.”  
   
“My father died. Yukimura recommended Rakuzan as the best for basketball.” Both sentences, delivered with the same flat directness.  
   
Tatsuya looked away from the two of them, shifted his attention to the ground instead. Shuzo had refused his offer to come to the funeral. It had been held in America. Shuzo’s father had made many friends in America and had wanted them to be able to attend the ceremony. But the body had been brought back to Japan.  
   
“My condolences,” Akashi said. It sounded sincere. And then, immediately on the back of that, “I will need to thank Seiichi-san. It will be a pleasure to be on the same team again, senpai.”  
   
“Seiichi-san? How well do you two know each other?”  
   
Akashi blinked. Tatsuya swallowed. The captain of Rakuzan and executor of the Emperor Eye had, in that moment, looked almost as much a child as Taiga did when he came across a new, larger type of burger. “We met in the summer of my last year at Teiko. He came to deliver a speech. He also gave me some advice. Valuable, but I did not see fit to take it at the time. Nevertheless, we have stayed in contact. I was not aware you were also acquainted with him, Nijimura-san.”  
   
“He and my father were in the same hospital in Tokyo.” Shuzo said. “Before we went to L.A.” A crack in his breathing. And then, steady, serious, “The real reason I wanted to talk to you, Akashi.”  
   
The kid was immediately back on his guard. He studied Shuzo with neutral eyes.  
   
Shuzo said, “Your playing is off.”  
   
Tatsuya hadn’t seen anything of the sort.  
   
Akashi stiffened.  
   
“I heard from Tatsuya –”  
   
“I am fine,” Akashi said, flatly. Almost a warning. “That incident was months ago.”  
   
A pause. “I saw the way you were looking at that kid with the pale hair. Mayuzumi Chihiro, right? Shouhei’s cousin.”  
   
Akashi’s shoulders tensed again, and Tatsuya craned his head a bit more in an attempt to gauge his reaction. Shuzo’s remark had seemed more like a non-sequitur than anything else. Tatsuya was becoming increasingly confused. He knew Tsukino Shouhei. Shuzo had talked about him before. A childhood friend. Tatsuya had yet to meet him. And Shuzo had never mentioned – Chihiro, was it – before this.  
   
After a moment, Akashi relaxed, and he laughed. It was a soft sound. “Most people don’t even notice that Chihiro exists. On or off the court.”  
   
“Is it all right?” Shuzo said. His tone was tentative. “For him to be playing basketball? After what happened.”  
   
“Chihiro’s injuries were not severe. He has recovered from them.”  
   
“Then why are the both of you –”  
   
“Senpai,” Akashi interrupted, the first time Tatsuya had seen him be anything but completely polite to Shuzo. “I can handle myself. And Chihiro. We are fine.”  
   
“I hate it when you do that,” Shuzo said, frankly. There was a hollow note in his voice that seized at Tatsuya’s protective instincts. He dug his nails into his hands in an effort to prevent himself from leaving his position behind the pillar to demand to know what was wrong. At this point, if Tatsuya cut into the conversation, Shuzo was bound to be more than livid. “Insist on handling things on your own. You don’t have to, you know?”  
   
Akashi’s jacket was slung over his shoulders, defying the force of gravity to stay on as if to provide confirmation of Akashi’s inherent superiority to all lesser beings. When he hunched, though, it made him smaller than he was.  
   
And then he straightened, held his head up high. “You should watch the Kaijo-Seirin match. Tetsuya has developed an interesting style of play with Kagami Taiga. And Ryota has improved immensely. You will enjoy it, I think.”  
   
They stand in silence. And then Shuzo smiles. “Well, you do pride yourself on being right. I’ll go then.”  
   
Himuro’s neck was really starting to hurt him. Sensing that the conversation was about to conclude, he stepped back from the pillar and went in search of a vending machine before heading back to the hall. Upon handing Atsushi his snacks, he took stock of the scene on court. The first quarter had just ended. Both teams were on their benches. Beside him, Atsushi had commenced stuffing his face.  
   
A minute later, Shuzo was back at his side. “You followed me,” he said, without preamble.  
   
“Are my skills that badly deteriorated?”  
   
“I know you, that’s all. And you just confirmed my suspicions.”  
   
“Cunning. I like it. We could definitely be having sex later.”  
   
Atsushi’s hand froze as it dipped back into his bag of chips. And then unfroze. Well, Tatsuya had yet to see anything that would discomfit Atsushi enough to stop him eating for a significant length of time.  
   
Shuzo’s gaze was on him. Half-irritated, half-amused. “You won’t say anything.”  
   
“Not to anyone else,” Tatsuya said. It was an easy promise to make. He had never intended to use what he overheard; it was just useful to know. The hollowness that had been in Shuzo’s voice for just a moment during the conversation came back in his memory. Made his muscles tense. “But if you need to talk about any of it, you know you can talk to me.”  
   
Shuzo was quiet for a moment. His gaze had shifted away from Tatsuya to the court, where the two teams were getting ready for the second quarter to begin. As Tatsuya watched, he stepped right up to the railing, fingers bracing on the cold steel.  
   
And then he looked back at Tatsuya, and smiled. Tatsuya remembered that the first time he had seen that smile, he had thought it beautiful. “Thank you.”  
   
   
   
After the Seirin-Kaijo game, Shuzo made plans with Tatsuya to visit him in Akita once he had settled into his new school in Kyoto. He would see his friend again tomorrow for the final, of course, but Tatsuya was taking off directly afterwards to visit his grandparents in Hokkaido for what remained of winter vacation. After seeing Tatsuya leave with Murasakibara for the train station, he lingered for a moment at the gate to the stadium grounds. He felt a strange, unnecessary desire to see Akashi again, even though they had spoken not an hour ago.  
   
He had missed his kouhai, after all.  
   
Even so, this was pathetic. He had plenty of opportunity to see Akashi at the game tomorrow. And his other kouhai.  
   
A voice said behind him, “Nijimura-san.”  
   
Shuzo jumped, violently, and spun around. Exhaled. “Ah, Kuroko. You’ve gotten better at that.”  
   
“At what, Nijimura-san?” Utterly polite. The kid looked up at him with those pale blue eyes and an innocent expression, and expected Shuzo to buy his shit.  
   
Shuzo ruffled the kid’s hair. Kuroko flinched, but allowed it. He didn’t give off the impression; but Shuzo had figured out a long time ago that Kuroko liked it when people touched him. Touch reassured Kuroko that his friends knew that he was there. “Good game, brat. Sorry you lost.”  
   
“Yeah well, we’ll win next time,” growled the red-haired giant who had stopped to watch the exchange between them. “And who are you?”  
   
Shuzo flicked his gaze up and down the giant’s physique. Kagami Taiga. Tatsuya’s adopted younger brother. Shuzo had heard the overblown rumours about the guy, not from Tatsuya but from other people with some investment in the Japanese high school basketball scene. He had seen them in action just ten minutes ago. Someone with the same potential as the Generation of Miracles. The Zone. Kuroko’s new light. The stupid titles and phrases that gossips liked to come up with – it really did nothing but piss him off. He said, evenly, “Nijimura Shuzo. Good to make your acquaintance.”  
   
“Nijimura-san was captain at Teiko,” Kuroko explained. “Before Akashi-kun. He continued to be a regular on the team until circumstances forced him to retire early.”  
   
“Good game just now,” Shuzo said, repeating the compliment for Kagami’s benefit. “I was watching with Tatsuya up in the stands.”  
   
“You know Tatsuya? Are you an Uncrowned King?”  
   
“Yes, I know Tatsuya. And no.”  
   
The brat had the temerity to ask, “Then how good are you?”  
   
Kuroko said, “Kagami-kun.”  
   
“Kuroko,” Shuzo said, deciding that the best course of action for his temper was to ignore Kagami entirely. “I want to speak to you for a moment.”  
   
Kuroko and Kagami exchanged a look. After a moment, the red-haired giant backed up a few steps. “I’m going to buy a snack from the vending machine. Hurry up, Kuroko. Coach wants the team to have dinner at Maji Burger.”  
   
Kuroko adjusted the strap of his bag, blinked up at Shuzo. “Would you like to change locations?”  
   
“No, this is fine.”  
   
The sun was beginning to set. The flood of people out of the gates had slowed to a small stream while Shuzo had been finalising plans with Tatsuya, and then to a trickle while he talked to Kuroko and Kagami. Shuzo stuck his hands in his pockets. With the setting sun had come a gradual drop in temperature.  
   
After a moment, Shuzo said, “I heard that things went bad at Teiko after I left.”  
   
Kuroko’s fingers tightened on his bag strap.  
   
“Aomine and Murasakibara got bored. Akashi got obsessed with winning. And you, Kise, Midorima, and Momoi didn’t know what the hell to do. That about sum it up?”  
   
“It is very concise, Nijimura-san.”  
   
“I’m sorry you had to go through that. And that I wasn’t around to help.”  
   
Kuroko was quiet. His pale eyes were wide, as if he was attempting to understand why Shuzo would feel the need to apologize.  
   
Shuzo let his tone harden. “But if you’re trying to fix things, Kuroko, I have to tell you that I think you’re going about it the wrong way.”  
   
It was uncomfortable, standing here in the shadow of the open gate and the steadily oncoming night, carrying on this kind of conversation with his former kouhai. But nothing about the Generation of Miracles, which included Kuroko no matter what he liked to say on the matter, had ever been very comfortable. A constant mess of bottomless talent, teenage hormones, and the amount of crazy that came with both.  
   
Kuroko said, “I am doing my best.”  
   
“I know you are.”  
   
That bland, polite expression. Shuzo’s neck was beginning to crick from the tension in the air. Annoyed, he kicked at a loose stone on the ground. Said, “Relax. I’m not claiming to understand what exactly went down between you lot. Do your own thing. Just know I don’t approve.” He paused, and then decided it was the kind of thing that couldn’t really go without being said. “I’m joining Rakuzan after the winter break.”  
   
“Akashi-kun will win the Winter Cup,” Kuroko observed. His voice was deadpan. “With you on his team, he also has a higher chance of winning the Spring Tournament.”  
   
“It’s nice that you’ve retained a high opinion of my basketball skills. And is Akashi winning that bad of a thing?”  
   
Kuroko’s gaze flickered behind him. Shuzo followed automatically. Kuroko had an extraordinary awareness of his surroundings.  
   
Rakuzan were emerging from the glass doors of the stadium. Akashi’s hair burned in the setting sun. He was wearing his white and blue sports jersey, collar turned up against the cold.  
   
Shuzo looked past him to the large clock mounted on the wall above the doors. Swore. “I’m going to be late. See you tomorrow, Kuroko.”  
   
“Tomorrow,” Kuroko echoed.  
   
   
   
Sharing a room with Chihiro had been a decision made less out of a desire to spend time with his power forward, and more out of a desire to avoid his other teammates. Reo, and his persistent ‘Sei-chan’s, was a pill best taken in short doses. Kotaro’s enthusiasm was distracting on pre-game nights, when Seijuro needed to focus on devising strategies for the next day’s match. And Eikichi’s snoring was even more of a distraction. And not even an amusing one.  
   
Chihiro spent his free time reading light novels. At the best of times, he seemed to disdain conversation, and people who attempted to start conversations even more so. His quiet, cold, unforgiving presence was the perfect balm for Seijuro’s need to think clearly and logically about player strengths and weaknesses and on-court formations.  
   
On occasion, however, this pattern of events was disrupted. By nothing less than Chihiro’s unending, unapologetic curiosity.  
   
His teammate said, as Seijuro was halfway through his mental notes on Kaijo’s regulars, “Who was that guy who wanted to talk to you?”  
   
“You should know better than I,” Seijuro said, shifting from his position lying down on the bed to sitting cross-legged with his pillow across his lap. “You played basketball before the Generation of Miracles came onto the scene.”  
   
“Nijimura Shuzo,” Chihiro nodded. “The famous captain of Teiko. Three years ago, at any rate. I thought he retired.”  
   
“There were family circumstances. It appears that he is back now.”  
   
A short silence, as Chihiro decided if he wanted to continue the conversation. Eventually, Seijuro’s teammate returned his attention to his light novel.  
   
Seijuro picked up his pillow and set it down on the bed. Closed his eyes again, drawing up, discarding, and fleshing out scenarios and plans. Kaijo was not a team that should be underestimated. Although Seijuro would win, naturally. There was no other option. Not given who Seijuro was.  
   
Roughly two hours later, Chihiro closed his book with a barely audible snap. Turned out the lights and climbed into bed.  
   
Seijuro would have been irritated. But he had finished with his planning already, and had just started on some basic meditation to clear his mind. At the click of the light switch, he opened his eyes to darkness, blinked twice, and then got under the scratchy linen covers on his own bed.  
   
Chihiro said, “My cousin mentioned him before. They were childhood friends.”  
   
“Yes,” Seijuro said. “Satoshi told me.”  
   
“Fukube likes you.”  
   
Seijuro felt no need to address this statement. Fukube Satoshi was the son of a friend of Seijuro’s father. They had always had an easy relationship, one that neither of them needed to define. Something like brothers, something like friends, something like strangers who understood each other only in the context of the circles they shared and not in the general landscape of life.  
   
Chihiro’s hair gleamed almost white in the moonlight filtering in through the curtains on the windows. It reminded Seijuro, somewhat painfully, of Tetsuya’s hair on nights during the termly basketball training camps held for the Teiko regulars. The sleeping arrangements had always been the same. Satsuki in a separate room, divided off from theirs by a bamboo screen. Tetsuya and Daiki next to each other, because they were best friends and that for some reason warranted proximity. Ryota nearest the heater, because he hated the cold. And Shintaro wherever Oha Asa deemed was the luckiest place to be sleeping on that particular night in that particular month.  
   
Nijimura-san had said nothing, directly, about Seijuro’s failure during his years as captain after he had left.  
   
Chihiro shifted, made an annoyed sound.  
   
Seijuro was instantly alert. “Are you all right, Chihiro?”  
   
“I’m fine.” His teammate said. “Worry about yourself. Your playing was off, today.”  
   
The same thing Nijimura-san had said. Seijuro closed his eyes, forced the muscles in his body to relax. “Was it that obvious?”  
   
“No, not to anyone who matters.”  
   
Chihiro’s definition of people who mattered could be quite interesting. Seijuro felt a stab of humour. “Would you say Shintarou noticed it?”  
   
“He was caught up in your Teiko drama,” Chihiro said, dismissively.  
   
“What about the rest of our teammates?”  
   
“They saw what they wanted to see.”  
   
“It has been months,” Seijuro mused. “Perhaps I am too weak-minded.”  
   
Chihiro’s tone, to anyone else, would not have sounded angry. Just sarcastic. “Hardly. Go to bed, captain.”  
   
Long after Chihiro’s breathing had slowed to that of sleep, Seijuro remained awake. He kept his eyes closed, tried to calm himself in the soothing darkness behind his eyelids. But, and he would never admit this, he was afraid.  
   
In sleep waited the nightmare. Of the first-string basketball court at Rakuzan. Of the buzz of drugs in his system. Of the covered faces of people wearing the Rakuzan uniform. Nothing more than a attempt at bullying. More severe than usual, certainly. But high-school bullying nonetheless. Chihiro had arrived before any lasting damage was done. They had both recovered quickly from most of the injuries sustained. There had been concern, for a while, about Chihiro’s broken foot. But it had healed in six weeks, and Chihiro had been able to practice in eight. He had been forced to miss the Nationals in the autumn, but that was all.  
   
It made no sense that Seijuro, who had sustained no such long-term physical injury, should find it a hardship to stand upon a court. Should feel his blood pumping more rapidly than more, should find his breathing shallow and loud in his ears, should remember darkness and more helplessness than he had ever felt in his life. He practiced on a court every day at Rakuzan. The same court, even, where the incident had taken place.   
   
The linen blankets were heavy. He turned his head into the lumpy pillow, and blanked his mind. There was a match tomorrow. He needed to get over his unnecessary anxiety and sleep.  
   
   
   
Kaijo lost. Shuzo leaned against a pillar outside the teams’ locker rooms. Partly out of a vague interest in seeing both Kise and Akashi, and partly out of a more than vague interest in pretending not to eavesdrop on the quiet conversation taking place between Tatsuya and Kagami Taiga.  
   
Eventually, Tatsuya walked away from his adopted younger brother. Shuzo slid his gaze over, found that the red-haired giant was wearing that metal chain and ring around his thick neck again. And so was Tatsuya.  
   
His friend said, half-amused and half-irritated, “You were listening.”  
   
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” Shuzo said, calmly. “You asked me to wait for you.”  
   
And, anyway, Murasakibara was right next to him. Even though Shuzo was uncertain whether the brat had been more focused on eating or on eavesdropping. Still, it was unfair that he was the only one caught out.  
   
Murasakibara said, around a mouthful of Pocky, “Can we go now, Muro-chin?”  
   
“He’s going with you to your grandparents’?” Shuzo asked.  
   
Tatsuya nodded. “We decided that just yesterday.”  
   
At that moment, the Rakuzan locker room door opened, and the team filed outside. A cold silence hung over them. Akashi was the last to exit. His eyes, when they met Shuzo’s, gave nothing away.  
   
A tall boy with pale hair, whose presence Shuzo had to struggle to register, blinked slowly at seeing them. His gaze raked over Shuzo, then measured Tatsuya and Murasakibara. He turned away, hoisting his bag further up on his shoulder. “I’m going back to the hotel first. See you later for the after-game meeting.”  
   
The other two Uncrowned Kings glanced back at Akashi. When he nodded, they took their leave. Shuzo noticed that the one with the bright hair exchanged a glance with the remaining team member. Mibuchi Reo, he remembered. Mibuchi nodded.  
   
Akashi’s expression never changed.  
   
Beside Shuzo, Tatsuya shifted uncomfortably. He said, in a low voice, “Shuzo, I’m going to leave now. Atsushi and I need to catch the train.”  
   
Shuzo turned to his friend. Held out his hand for a clasp and then a quick hug. Tatsuya’s childhood in America always made itself known during good-byes; he liked physical contact a lot more than was usually appropriate in public settings.  
   
When they had pulled away from each other, and reconfirmed plans to meet up in Akita, they found their two kouhai staring each other down in the corridor.  
   
Murasakibara towered over Akashi.  
   
Akashi’s heterochromatic stare was piercing.  
   
“Aka-chin.”  
   
“Atsushi.”  
   
Mibuchi hadn’t left yet. He laughed, uncomfortably. Withdrew a thin photo album from his backpack and shoved them into Murasakibara’s hands. “Please share these with your friends. We’re kind of going out of our minds here.”  
   
Akashi blinked.  
   
Murasakibara paused.  
   
Shuzo snatched the photo album from his kouhai’s grip and began leafing through it, ignoring Tatsuya’s reprimand that he shouldn’t take something that Mibuchi had clearly meant for Murasakibara.  
   
After a moment, he looked up at Akashi, whose burning stare had become simply non-plussed. “You must be the strangest person I have ever met.”  
   
Murasakibara had been looking at the album over his shoulder. He said, petulantly, “Why am I a hamster, Aka-chin?”  
   
“Because you eat a lot, Atsushi,” Akashi said, patiently. Shuzo suppressed an automatic desire to either laugh or cry. Of course Akashi would see no issue in taking in pets that he named after his Teiko teammates. Of course he wouldn’t even be embarassed to have it come out.  
   
The door to the Kaijo locker room opened, and Kise emerged, head down. He stopped short at seeing Akashi.  
   
His teammates crashed into his back.  
   
“Oi, Kise!” snapped the kid’s captain, directing his foot at Kise’s side.  
   
“Kasamatsu-senpai!” Kise squawked. And then, more quietly, “Akashicchi.” With surprise. “Nijimuracchi. What are you doing here?”  
   
Shuzo scowled. “Don’t call me that, brat.”  
   
The rest of the Kaijo team had gone deadly silent at seeing Akashi.  
   
Tatsuya said, “Come on, Atsushi. We’re going to be late. See you, Shuzo.”  
   
“Ah,” Shuzo said, only half paying attention.  
   
Murasakibara took the photo album from him and tossed it at Kise, who caught it with a surprised blink. “You’re the puppy, Kise-chin.”  
   
“I’m – what?”  
   
“He’s what?” Kasamatsu echoed.  
   
Akashi said, “This is becoming inconvenient. Reo –”  
   
Shuzo hadn’t even noticed when Akashi’s remaining teammate made himself scarce.  
   
Kise was flipping through the photo album with his customary rapid enthusiasm. “Akashicchi,” he whined, “you’re not supposed to pick up random pets. Midorimacchi will be mad when he finds out.”  
   
Akashi gave him a narrow glare. “There is no particular reason why Shintaro would need to know, Ryota.”  
   
Kise said, gleefully, “Well, I’m telling him.”  
   
“Are you?”  
   
The glee turned into a nervous, high-pitched laugh. Kise gripped the photo album with both hands. “Well. See you, Akashicchi!” And promptly took off down the corridor, in the opposite direction from Akashi and the entry to the stadium.  
   
Kasamatsu swore. “Kise!”  
   
Shuzo glanced at Akashi. Akashi met his gaze briefly before looking in the direction where Kise had gone.  
   
No one had ever said that Shuzo was a bad senpai, per se.  
   
He said, “Akashi, have dinner with me.”  
   
   
   
They had dinner in a ramen shop down the road. The same one in which Shuzo had had dinner with his younger sister the day before. The restaurant owner smiled at him when he came in, laughed at how soon he had come back. Shuzo complimented her on the quality of her food.  
   
Akashi was examining the cracked, colourful cutlery with an expression of great concentration.  
   
Shuzo ordered for the both of them.  
   
One thing Shuzo had liked about Akashi when they were in junior high was that Akashi saw no need to talk when there was nothing to say. Kise was bubbly and loud. Aomine was flippant and rude. Midorima was whimsical and serious. Kuroko was calm and polite. Akashi was always even-tempered. Calculating. Kind.  
   
Shuzo said, when the food had arrived, “So. You won.”  
   
“It was to be expected,” Akashi said, pausing with his chopsticks in mid-air. “Ryota played extremely well. As did his teammates. As did Shintaro and his team in the semi-finals. I respect both Shutoku and Kaijo for the drive and skill that they showed in our matches. Nonetheless, victory was inevitable.”  
   
That. Shuzo didn’t know where to even begin dealing with that. It was just as well that it wasn’t his job.  
   
He settled simply for saying, “You’re going to lose one day, Akashi.”  
   
He had thought that that would be the end of it. Akashi would refute him, or he would ignore him, or he would accept the statement without believing it. It would have been characteristic.  
   
But Akashi said, chopsticks still poised mid-air and gaze focused on the bowl of ramen in front of him, “Perhaps.”  
   
“What?” Shuzo stared at him. The steam from his own ramen bowl curled into the air between them. It was dark outside the windows of the restaurant.  
   
“In my last year at Teiko, Seiichi-san said something similar. As I told you yesterday, I found it valuable advice. In hindsight.”  
   
“Really,” Shuzo said. Smiled. The expression made something inside him twist. “In hindsight of what?” Shuzo hadn’t had it rammed home – that he could lose, really lose – until meeting Akashi, meeting Midorima, meeting the other members of the Generation of Miracles. He hadn’t had the lesson engraved into his bones until the day his father died.  
   
“Himuro Tatsuya informed you of what happened.” Akashi said.  
   
What, Shuzo thought. The use of first names. But, more importantly – oh. His insides twisted harder. “Akashi –”  
   
“Losing is still losing if the opponent cheated, Nijimura-san. My father told me that when I was very young.”  
   
“What happened to you wasn’t a question of winning or losing,” Shuzo snapped. He had never liked Akashi Masaomi. In fact, in junior high, he had sometimes imagined socking the man in the jaw. “It was – ”  
   
Akashi had never interrupted him two times in a row before. But he said, without looking up, “If we may change the subject.”  
   
Shuzo wasn’t the person to save Akashi. To fix him. To attempt either of those things was the ultimate condescension, and Shuzo respected Akashi too much for that.  
   
He did wish that Akashi would let him help him.  
   
He nodded. Caught up a flat piece of pork with his chopsticks. “Tell me about the pets then. How did that bit of abnormality come about?”  
   
“Taking in Tetsuya No. 1 was a kindness, not an abnormality. As was taking in Shintaro. Daiki, Atsushi and Ryota were…unexpected but welcome.” Akashi’s tone was a little confused, a little affronted. It made laughter bubble in Shuzo’s throat.  
   
He swallowed it down. “So let me get this straight. Kuroko is a fish, Midorima is a tortoise, Aomine is a cat, Murasakibara is a hamster, and Kise is a puppy. Pray tell, what would you be?”  
   
“I hardly set out to collect them,” Akashi said. “It was merely appropriate.”  
   
“Very appropriate, I’m sure.”  
   
“I do believe it is rude to laugh that loudly in a restaurant, Nijimura-san.”  
   
   
   
Nijimura Shuzo joined Rakuzan in January. The team was composed of only second-years as well as Akashi, the first-year captain. Someone would be forced to give way to the former captain of Teiko. Chihiro knew this in his bones.  
   
It would not be obvious to anyone else. Nijimura was not as well-known as the Uncrowned Kings; he had played in fewer and fewer games in his third year, and all previous stardom had been lost in the shadow of the Generation of the Miracles. But Chihiro was different. His cousin, a Teiko student, had mentioned Nijimura to him once, and Chihiro had become vaguely interested in a captain who could cede his own captaincy without resigning from the team altogether. That kind of selflessness existed only in manga.  
   
Therefore, Chihiro had gone through some of his old basketball magazines, specifically looking for articles on Nijimura Shuzo. There had been little personal information, obviously. The articles were meant to fuel gossip and drum up enthusiasm more than deliver accurate portrayals of the individuals involved. But he had learned enough from the descriptions of matches that Nijimura had participated in to get an idea of his skill.  
   
If Nijimura was anything like he had been two years ago, he would become a regular on the Rakuzan team with very little trouble at all.  
   
Akashi always came to watch the try-outs. As the captain, he was the only one who didn’t have to play. But he stood at the edge of the courts, jacket draped loosely over his shoulders, and watched, expression blank and gaze following the movements of everyone playing with the same clear sharpness that he displayed in regular practice. He was measuring the second- and third-string players as well as the first-string and regulars, Chihiro knew. Picking out possible talent. Designing training programs for club members to improve ordinary skills.  
   
“If there’s one thing Sei-chan can’t stop doing,” someone sighed next to Chihiro. “It’s thinking.”  
   
Chihiro blinked. At some point, Mibuchi had finished his game on one of the other courts, and had come to stand beside Chihiro.  
   
Hayama joined them, arms folded behind his head. “Akashi stop thinking?” he laughed, snorting through his nose. “Impossible. Completely impossible.”  
   
“Is Nebuya going to chime in too?” Chihiro said, scathingly. Life in the basketball team worked too much like a manga for his comfort, most of the time. Akashi was a case in point. He had come across the first-year captain sitting in an empty classroom at some point in the last year, tossing a shogi piece into the air. And catching it, every single time. There had even been the light of the setting sun on the classroom floor.  
   
Hayama waved a hand dismissively. “He’s not done with his match yet. But he’ll be over soon, I bet. The guy who captained Akashi for a few months – who wouldn’t want to see him play?”  
   
“He is quite good,” Mibuchi commented, after a moment, as they watched the game taking place on the court in front of them. Nijimura darted up the side of the court, intercepted a pass from the point guard on the opposing side, and threw it up to one of his teammates. “His technique is almost flawless. He’s very fast, and he has a good sense of the court.”  
   
“But,” Hayama said, sounding bored. “Other than that, there’s nothing particularly special. I mean, his technique isn’t as perfect as that Himuro guy from Yosen. There are faster players. And his court sense isn’t nearly as good as any of the point guards from the big schools.”  
   
Chihiro was quiet. Everything that they had said was true. And the articles he had read about Nijimura weren’t contradictory. Nijimura was good. He had to be, had to have been. Teiko was no push-over, even as a middle school. To be captain at Teiko, you had to be exemplary.  
   
It was enough for a spot on the first string. But the regulars? Still, Chihiro had gotten good at trusting his instincts since joining Akashi’s starting team – misdirection required a lot in the way of instinct, after all. And something told him that Nijimura could be a regular. He just hadn’t shown it yet.  
   
There were only two games still on-going in the sports hall. The one Nebuya was playing in, and this one. Chihiro glanced towards Akashi, found him walking away from Nebuya’s game to join them on the sidelines of Nijimura’s.  
   
“Sei-chan,” Mibuchi said, half a greeting, half a question.  
   
Akashi folded his arms. His red hair glinted in the overhead lights. He said nothing in response, face set in quiet concentration. His eyes flickered back and forth across the court, following the movements of each individual player.  
   
A muffled murmuring started up around the court. Everyone who had finished their matches were usually allowed to watch the ones that were still in progress. Akashi considered observation an important part of practice. And practice of any kind was considered better than lounging around uselessly.  
   
Chihiro, who had been distracted for a moment by an attempt to calculate if Akashi was watching his former captain just a bit more than he was watching the oher players on the court, blinked at the increase in noise levels. He returned his attention to the match proper rather than Akashi’s eye movements.  
   
Nakamura Takahiro, whose face made Chihiro twitch in irritation – he had been promoted from the second to the first string shortly before Chihiro had been promoted from the third to the first, and had cut off their halting friendship with immediate effect – was facing off against Nijimura. The latter was in defensive position, left arm braced in front of his right, which was dribbling the ball.  
   
Hayama said, “Hey, Akashi, between Nakamura and that guy –”  
   
Nebuya boomed. “Nakamura. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Nakamura’s not a regular, but his defense is better than any of the other morons in the first string.”  
   
Chihiro suppressed a flinch. He hadn’t even noticed that Nebuya’s game had ended.  
   
Akashi was quiet.  
   
Nijimura moved.  
   
Rapidly, suddenly, he faked a shift to the right. When Nakamura moved to intercept, he was already driving past him on the left. Nakamura shifted back, attempting to catch him, or at least steal the ball. But Nijimura’s drive was too strong; Nakamura stumbled and almost fell.  
   
And then Nijimura was inside the basket. A breath away from being able to shoot.  
   
Aoyama Kenji and Fukui Kojiro, from the first-string and second-string respectively, moved to intercept. Without even blinking, cornered, Nijimura caught the ball mid-drive and swung it towards an open teammate on the three-point line. The pass was lightning-fast and sharply accurate. Nijimura darted between Aoyama and Fukui, caught the pass from his teammate on the three-point line, and landed a basket. In all, it had taken less than ten seconds.  
   
Hayama’s voice was louder when he was excited. Chihiro winced as the other boy jumped on Mibuchi, exclaiming, “Did you see that, Reo-nee? Did you?”  
   
Mibuchi struggled to breathe. “Kotaro, please.”  
   
“Hey, Akashi,” said Nebuya. “Is there more where that came from? I mean, he was pretty normal up until then.”  
   
Hayama stopped strangling Mibuchi. “You mean it was a fluke.” The enthusiasm gave way to annoyance. “Boring.”  
   
Akashi spared them all a glance before returning his attention to the match, which had started up again. Nakamura, who seemed to have decided that it was as of now his life’s mission to show up Nijimura’s alleged fluke, had stuck himself on the second-year’s tail. Nijimura, who had struck Chihiro as being the hot-tempered type, from the basketball interviews and the burning focus he had demonstrated on the court so far, seemed supremely indifferent to his new barnacle. This was only increasing Nakamura’s humiliated rage.  
   
Akashi said, “Nijimura-san has not played competitively for two years. It is to be expected that he will demonstrate slow starts in games that present actual challenges to his abilities.”  
   
“So it’s – not a fluke,” Hayama said. “You could just answer the question, Akashi.”  
   
Mibuchi tugged at Hayama’s arm around his neck. “You could release me, Kotaro.”  
   
Chihiro settled into a cross-legged position on the ground. The ill-tempered atmosphere that now pervaded the court after Nijimura’s sudden display of talent – an unwelcome threat to the first- and second-stringers who hadn’t expected a new challenge until the beginning of the new school year – was distinctly irritating. Chihiro had never been able to see the point in power showdowns. Who had the bigger dick. Who was the bigger dick. What did it fucking matter?  
   
Akashi eyed him, but said nothing. He was getting better about the concern. In the first few weeks after Chihiro’s injury, Akashi had been constantly worried, almost jumpy, particularly when it came to Chihiro. Of course, he had never acted that way in front of the people who didn't matter. But he slipped up around Chihiro and the other starters. He slipped up around his stupid named-for-the-Generation-of-Miracles pet menagerie. And he slipped up when he thought nobody could see.  
   
Chihiro was good at hiding. He could count the number of times that he had, on instinct, stayed behind after practice ended, and seen Akashi lock the locker room door and walk out into the center of the first-string court. Stand there, head down, in the quiet moonlit darkness. As if he were steeling himself against something.  
   
Chihiro had never liked Akashi. The first-year captain was arrogant, calculating, and had intended Chihiro to be a new and improved version of his old teammate. Whether that last had changed over their months togther, Chihiro still had no idea. And even if it had, it wouldn’t change Chihiro’s opinion of the kid. Akashi was powerful. Akashi was perceptive. He had noticed Chihiro, and he was the reason that Chihiro had been given the opportunity to actually get on a basketball court during a match. But Akashi was Akashi. And Chihiro couldn’t like him.  
   
He had still wanted to kill those bastards who had wanted to bring him low. Low enough that Akashi would never get up again.  
   
A sudden cheer from the spectators of the on-going match brought Chihiro out from his unwelcome speculations and back into focus. He tracked the events on the court.  
   
Nijimura and Nakamura were locked in a one-on-one again. Nakamura was quiet. Coldly so. Nijimura’s expression was bland.  
   
“Hey,” Hayama whispered, loudly, “He doesn’t look tired.”  
   
It was true. From what Chihiro had seen of the match, Nijimura’s moves tended to be the type that required a significant amount of power and speed. But, in contrast to Nakamura, who was panting, chest heaving, Nijimura was still breathing calm and steady. Sweat was pouring down his face, same as Nakamura’s. But there was a distinct difference in their levels of energy.  
   
Akashi spoke. “Cool-headedness, quick thinking, and stamina. These are where Nijimura-san excels. It is especially evident in his habitual combination of drive, pass, and shoot. Watch carefully.”  
   
Nijimura steamrollered past Nakamura.  
   
Nakamura had changed strategies from the last time. He shifted quickly backwards, but not in a move to intercept or to steal. Instead, he covered Nijimura from the side as Aoyama covered him from the front and Fukui covered the other side. Together, they made it impossible for Nijimura to pass.  
   
“He can’t pass,” Nebuya pointed out, sounding almost disgruntled.  
   
“If it was Ei-chan,” Hayama mused from where he was still draped over Mibuchi, “he could just bulldoze it. I mean, Ei-chan’s a muscle brain, and that’s not a special skill. But it’s way intimidating. All that weight.” He pulled a face. “It makes me tired just thinking about going up against him.”  
   
Mibuchi had given up on cajoling, persuading, or just outright shoving his teammate off of him. He said, instead, tone ambiguously between fondness and irritation, “If it was Hayama, he would use that animal-like speed to get out of the triple team.”  
   
Hayama grinned. “Animal-like? And what about you, Reo-nee? You would just force a foul, right? Quick, dirty, and effective.”  
   
Neither of them bothered to speculate what Chihiro or Akashi would do. It was a rare scenario where someone decided to triple team Chihiro, when it was difficult enough to even register his presence. And Akashi – well, Emperor’s Eye had solved multiple similar situations in the past. People stayed out of Akashi’s way, or they sprawled at his feet. It was really that simple.  
   
Nijimura’s expression hadn’t shifted once. He also hadn’t moved.  
   
Nakamura, whose intention appeared to have been to wait for Nijimura to act before swooping in to steal the ball in a manner more humiliating that simply taking it, lost patience. He moved, diving in from the right.  
   
Nijimura was utterly still. It crossed Chihiro’s mind, in the split second of Nakamura’s dive, that Nijimura couldn’t decide on a course of action. If that was the case – if Nijimura couldn’t do something – then Nakamura was going to take the ball as easily as taking candy from a baby.  
   
He considered shutting his eyes out of sympathy, but discarded the idea almost before it he had formed. The sympathy was barely more than a twinge.  
   
All was rendered moot when, in the one-fourth of a second between Nakamura’s hand and the ball, Nijimura simply took a step backwards and swept the ball left, into the open hands of a teammate on the half-court.  
   
He had taken advantage of that moment, that breath of a moment, when his other defenders had relaxed – when it became clear that Nakamura was going to get the ball – and used a burst of power and speed to send the target elsewhere.  
   
A different kind of intelligence from Akashi’s, in that it was more matter-of-fact than all-encompassing. But every bit as ruthless.  
   
Nijimura’s teammate passed the ball back to him. The ensuing three-pointer circled the rim once before sinking in.  
   
Akashi had seen enough. He stepped back from the court. Instructed Mibuchi to watch over drills and then end practice half an hour later. It surprised no one. Practice always ended early on the first day of term, as the coaches needed to draw up new training schedules for each string and for each individual starter player.  
   
Chihiro watched him go before unfolding himself from the floor.  
   
On the court in front of them, the match had ended with a final point made by Nijimura’s team.  
   
   
   
“I’m a starter,” Shuzo informed Tatsuya over the phone, leaning against one of the two pillars that held up the open porch in front of Rakuzan’s boys’ dormitory. Behind him, the glass doors to the dormitory slid open and closed, as a trio of third-year boys jostled each other down the steps and out into the darkened courtyard. They were being unnecessarily loud. Shuzo shot a narrow glare at their backs.  
   
Tatsuya was laughing, half-amused, half-congratulatory. “Did you expect a different outcome? You sound disgruntled, Shuu.”  
   
Shuzo turned his face to the pillar, banged his forehead once against the cool sandstone. “I’d forgotten how much training sucks.” Grimacing, as he remembered how he had puked after the third hour of practice, to his own humiliation, he added. “And that wouldn’t even be the problem – I’ll get used to training. But the bitching. I’d really forgotten about the bitching. When Akashi said my name – you could have heard a fucking pin drop. And then, the minute practice ended –”  
   
“They wouldn't shut up,” Tatsuya guessed.  
   
“Right,” Shuzo said. And scrubbed a hand through his hair. Just washed, it ran easily through his fingers. His new school-issue white-and-blue jumper felt crisp against his clean skin. He stared up at the glass ceiling. Combined with the hot shower he had had just minutes before, the familiar sound of his best friend’s voice was beginning to erode away at his irritation. “Some of the things they said – it’s not like it matters, really. I shouldn’t care.”  
   
“Did they hit a nerve?” A pause, and then Tatsuya’s voice shifted, became steely. “They didn’t mention your father.”  
   
Shuzo hesitated. Discomfort curled slick and ugly deep in his gut. His throat felt thick. “They didn’t. Just –” Akashi. They had said things about Akashi.  
   
A loud voice drifted down the courtyard. Deliberately pitched at a loud volume, delibrately shrill, deliberately mocking. Shuzo had always had sharp ears; something inside him flinched instinctively at the ugly noise. Like nails scratching across a chalkboard. He shifted his phone away from his ear and looked for the voice’s owner. He had half a mind to punch him.  
   
It was one of the third-year boys who had passed by him earlier. The tallest of them, in fact, with spiky hair and a broad back. He and his friends were towering over someone, looming in that way that only bullies could loom. Shuzo had spent a lot of time on the streets of L.A. after meeting Tatsuya, and he had seen dozens of these lowlifes. Sporting tattoos and bad hairdos or wearing expensive school uniforms – they were all the same. Gritting his teeth, he said to Tatsuya, “Something’s come up.”  
   
His friend said, easily, “Sure. Call me back.”  
   
Shuzo pocketed his phone and started down the steps.  
   
In a moment, he was within close enough range of the bullies to hear what their leader was saying, in that deliberately shrill, deliberately mocking tone of voice. “Heard that your ex-captain’s back on your team now, Seijuro-chan. Going to run to him with all your problems now, instead of Daddy? Oh, how do I crush my next enemy, Captain-san? Oh, how do I suck your dick, Captain-san? I mean, at least he’ll listen right? Everyone knows your daddy hates you. And your friends. But wait. You stole your beloved captain’s position, didn’t you? Just like you steal everything else. He probably hates you. Whose dick are you going to suck then?”  
   
All of Shuzo’s blood rushed to his head in one hot, boiling surge of fury. He was aware, vaguely, that his hands were clenched. He stopped before he could get close enough to the bastards that he might do something he would regret.  
   
Akashi was just standing there. Face blank, almost bored.  
   
Why wasn’t he saying anything?  
   
“Scared of me now, are you?” said Spiky Hair. He sounded gleeful. “Really, you flatter me. Beat up an arrogant fucking bastard once, and he gets all humble. Just stands there and takes it. Want to take it up the ass, Seijuro-chan? I mean, if you don’t find me attractive enough, then maybe your beloved captain –”  
   
Shuzo had never regretted anything less. Head completely clear, in complete control of himself, he closed the remaining distance between himself and Spiky Hair, and let his foot do the rest of the work.  
   
Spiky Hair hit the ground butt-first, legs sprawling.  
   
His minions sprawled too. Shuzo smiled grimly. Clustered together so tightly – as if they were still afraid of Akashi, despite their words and their looming – it was as if they had been asking to get tangled up with their leader when he went down.  
   
The mess of limbs and squawking was one of the more satisfying things Shuzo had seen in his short life.  
   
Akashi stepped over them, as carefully and dismissively as if they were nothing more than a pile of shit, and continued past Shuzo towards the boys’ dormitory.  
   
As Shuzo was deciding if he should follow him – Akashi could be unpredictable when it came to things like this – his kouhai looked back and said, “Nijimura-san, if you would come with me.”  
   
Ah, well, Shuzo knew that tone of voice.  
   
Akashi set a measured pace up the steps, into the dormitory’s reception area, and up the stairs to the floors where each year had their bedrooms, kitchens and common rooms. Along the way, they stopped at the second-year kitchen. Shuzo lounged by the door while Akashi checked that Hayama had overseen the basketball club’s first-years in their care of his pet menagerie. Hayama shot Shuzo a curious look, which Shuzo ignored. They were little more than teammates at the moment. Shuzo owed him, Mibuchi, Nebuya, and Mayuzumi little more than courtesy and teamwork. Anything else would have to come later.  
   
On the scholarship students’ floor – incidentally the same floor where Shuzo now lived – Akashi stopped in front of the handsome wooden door with his nameplate that Shuzo had so far seen but not entered. He gestured Shuzo inside, shut the door, and then said, without preamble, “I had hoped, Nijimura-san, that during the Winter Cup I made it clear to you that I am fully capable of handling myself.”  
   
And straight to the point.  
   
“I remember,” Shuzo said. He brushed over the lingering feelings of anger and the uncomfortable twist of some other emotion he didn’t want to name – something like sorrow, something like pain – and found a measure of calm. “I didn’t really do it for you. Not entirely.”  
   
A breath. Akashi studied him, brilliant red-gold gaze at once warmer than flame and harder than iron. Then he relented. “They were insulting you as well. I apologise. I did not take that into account when considering your actions.”  
   
“You can look after yourself.”  
   
Akashi opened his mouth, then closed it. He seemed to have picked up on something in Shuzo’s voice. Well, that was too bad. Shuzo had been trying to keep his tone even.  
   
He said, “You weren’t looking after yourself, Akashi. What the hell were you doing, letting them talk to you like that?”  
   
“Their taunts were childish and ineffective.”  
   
“Their taunts were cruel and vindictive.”  
   
“Nonetheless, ineffective.”  
   
In the locker room – they had said the same things. Only a minority, of course, had said the kind of things that Spiny Hair had been spouting. Most of the Rakuzan basketball team respected Akashi even as they feared him. Rather than their fearsome captain, they had mostly just insulted Shuzo. Minor, petty insults that he knew from experience would die out as he began to integrate properly into the club as a whole. But that tiny minority – those half a dozen bastards who called Akashi everything from a slut to a fucking lunatic – Shuzo had had to refrain from reverting to his old bad habits and beating their shit out of them.  
   
Akashi could handle himself. This was true of Tatsuya too. Shuzo thought highly of them for it. Was proud of them for it. Usually took comfort in the fact that he could count on them to be okay unless they were in over their heads.  
   
He said, at last. “I’ll take your word for it.” And then, as Akashi paused, clearly having expected more resistance, he cast a glance around the room, spotted a flash of green under Akashi’s bed and dived for it.  
   
He emerged triumphantly holding Shintaro the tortoise aloft. Along with Akashi’s shogi board. As he had suspected, Midorima Shintaro remained inextricably connected, in his captain’s strange little mind, with Akashi’s favourite mental exercise. “Want to see if you can beat the rules into me two years after the first disastrous attempt?”  
   
His kouhai blinked at him. After a moment, he said, “Nijimura-san, you understand how to play shogi.”  
   
“I still haven’t managed to beat you.”  
   
“Shintaro is a far more experienced player, and he has yet to successfully execute a checkmate in any of our games.”  
   
“Akashi. Just play with me. Or I will let Daiki the cat into Tetsuya the Fifteenth’s tank and he will be one dead fish.”  
   
“It is Tetsuya the Sixteenth.”  
   
Shuzo swallowed his disbelief. “Tetsuya the Sixteenth’s tank, then,” he snapped. “Either way, he’s a dead fish.”  
   
Had he imagined it, or were Akashi’s fingers, as he took the shogi board from Shuzo’s hands and removed the lid, just a little gentler than might be expected? His gaze a little warmer.  
   
   
   
The first practice match that Shuzo participateed in was against Shutoku High School. Rakuzan went down to Tokyo for part of the weekend, and Shuzo took the afternoon on Friday to visit his mother and younger brothers. Akashi disappeared, and when he came back, Shuzo noticed that he looked quietly happy.  
   
“Did you see your friends?” he said. The others in their team had still to come back. They were probably spending the night in Tokyo with their families; the basketball team was leaving for Kyoto directly after the match.  
   
Akashi was seated at the desk in the hotel room he shared with Mayuzumi and that Shuzo had crashed. His attention was on an English worksheet. Shuzo closed the distance between them and stole a look over his shoulder. Wrinkled his nose. It was easy as hell. No wonder Akashi’s pen was moving so quickly.  
   
After circling the answer to the last objective question on the page, Akashi put the worksheet aside and looked up at him.  
   
Shuzo took an automatic step back. Too close. The weird feelings that had been skiterring around his ribcage since he had confronted Akashi outside the Rakuzan locker room after the Winter Cup match with Shutoku – they jumped up a notch. It made it difficult to breathe.  
   
Akashi said, “Ryota invited me to dinner. The others appeared surprised to see me, but it was an enjoyable evening.”  
   
Shuzo nodded, backed up another few steps and sat on the bed nearest the desk. “That’s great. I’m pleased for you.”  
   
“I had missed our gatherings,” Akashi said, picking up his pen again and twisting it over his fingers. It was done expertly, of course; Akashi probably had to try to execute something with less than expert flawlessness. The thought made Shuzo smile. His kouhai, trying to fail.  
   
They fell into a comfortable quiet. Akashi put away his books in his bag, and Shuzo folded his arms behind his head and lay down, staring up at the ceiling. It was warm in the hotel room; he was still full from his mother’s dinner; and Akashi’s presence was like a balm on the unrest still itching at the back of Shuzo’s mind. He began to drift off to sleep.  
   
And then Akashi said, “Nijimura-san, if I may ask a personal question.”  
   
Shuzo forced himself back to wakefulness, shot his kouhai a baleful glare. “What?”  
   
“Reo, Chihiro and the others are all staying with family or friends tonight. Why have you not chosen to do the same?”  
   
Shuzo redirected his gaze at the ceiling, contemplated the answer he should give. Finally, he said, “Kaa-san is really busy. Looking after the brats on her own, and working, and everything. I don’t want to add to her workload.”  
   
He hated lying; the words sounded hollow in his mouth. He had done so much of it while Tou-san was sick. Lying to his siblings that their father would be all right. Lying to his mother that he was all right, he was the eldest, she shouldn’t worry about him. And of course he was fine with quitting the basketball club to help out at home.  
   
He turned on his side so that he wouldn’t have to look Akashi in the face.  
   
Akashi was quiet. Shuzo waited for him to ask. Shuzo was not a good liar; surely he had noticed.  
   
But when Akashi spoke, it wasn’t a question. He said, apropos of nothing, “I will be spending the next hour going over plans for tomorrow’s match.”  
   
Shuzo sat up, scuffed his foot on the burgundy carpet. “You want me to go?”  
   
“You have a sharp mind, Nijimura-san,” Akashi said, matter-of-factly, “And Shutoku was a more than respectable opponent in the Winter Cup. I would be grateful if you will do me the favour of providing assistance.”  
   
It was warm in the room. Winter was deep; it was snowing on the streets of Tokyo. Shuzo heard himself laugh, short and wry. “Sure. If you want me to.”  
   
They woke up bright and early for the match. Shuzo felt well-rested as he left his room and joined Akashi and their coach on the train from the hotel to Shutoku. The others would be joining them there.  
   
Akashi was pristine in his white and blue Rakuzan jersey and pants, his short red hair gleaming in the early morning sunlight. In the train car, Shuzo allowed himself to reach out and ruffle the fine strands. It was shorter than he remembered.  
   
Tatsuya had told him a story that he said Kagami had told him. About how Akashi had borrowed a pair of scissors from Midorima before the first matches of the Winter Cup, cut his hair in front of his former teammates. And promptly used the same pair of scissors to attack Tatsuya’s adopted brother.  
   
Akashi’s gaze was a mix of curiosity and irritation. “Nijimura-san –”  
   
Shuzo dropped his hand, smirked at him. “Once a kouhai, always a kouhai. Thanks for not growing as much as Murasakibara. I don’t think I would even be able to reach his head. How Tatsuya deals with him, I don’t know.”  
   
“I believe they are friends,” Akashi said. “It seems to have become a trend amongst some of us, the Miracles. Shintaro and Shutoku’s point guard are a case in point. As are Tetsuya and his new light.”  
   
“Some of us, you said,” Shuzo observed.  
   
“Ryota’s captain is graduating soon. And Daiki continues to rely on Satsuki. Although his relationship with Tetsuya seems to have improved of late.”  
   
“And what about you?” Shuzo said, grinning. He hadn’t had much time to properly pay attention to how Akashi interacted with his teammates outside practice. During practice, of course, Akashi was the consumnate captain. Cool, impartial, disciplined. “You seem to get along with Mayuzumi –”  
   
Akashi’s tone was blank. “We are teammates, nothing more. I confess I fail to understand how the others have built such relationships as they have. However, it appears to have proved useful in enhancing their coordination.”  
   
At some point in the last five minutes, they had drawn up to the station. And that was the end of their conversation. Akashi was in full match mode now, concentrated on only one thing – basketball.  
   
Shuzo hoisted his bag over his shoulder, admired the architecture of the newly built Shutoku sports hall, and let the subject go.  
   
It was an unbelievable feeling to be on the court again. He couldn’t be on all the time, obviously. He switched positions with Mayuzumi and Hayama depending on what Akashi was planning at different times. But, still, the reason he loved playing basketball competitively wasn’t just being on the court. It was the atmosphere, the tension, the feeling of being an integral part of a team.  
   
Rakuzan won.  
   
After the players on the court shook hands, Midorima approached Shuzo at the bench before he could follow the rest of the Rakuzan team to the locker room that had been set aside for them.  
   
“Senpai,” he said, and pushed his glasses further up on his nose. “If you have a moment, I would like to speak to you.”  
   
Shuzo suppressed a laugh. Well, this was one kouhai he hadn’t seen yet. He glanced at Akashi. “I’ll stay for a minute.”  
   
Akashi’s gaze flicked between him and Midorima. His jacket was back draped over his shoulders. His hair was dripping sweat onto the open neck of his uniform. “Very well,” he said, after a moment. “I will see you later, Nijimura-san.”  
   
Shuzo’s mind twitched. There was something about what Akashi called him that sounded strange to his ears, and he had yet to figure out what. He smiled. “Okay.”  
   
Mayuzumi gave them a curious glance before following the rest of the team inside to the lockers.  
   
At the other bench, Shutoku’s dark-haired point guard called, brightly, “I’ll wait for you outside, Shin-chan! My turn to choose dinner on the way home.”  
   
“Your boyfriend?” Shuzo said, with a straight face, before Midorima could reply.  
   
His kouhai spluttered.   
   
He flicked Midorima on the forehead, sighed dramatically. “I go away for two years, and three-fifths of you have boyfriends by the time I get back. The Generation of Miracles – in love as in basketball.”  
   
“Senpai –”  
   
“What is Takao’s sign, anyway? Something eminently compatible?”  
   
“That it is is of no consequence!” The annoyance in his kouhai’s voice was clear. “Senpai, I am trying to speak to you –”  
   
Well, time to give it up. It was a pity. Picking on Midorima was more fun than picking on most of his other kouhai. Aomine responded with either indifference or violence. Kise whined. Murasakibara understood only the language of sweets, and depriving him of those was more trouble than it was worth. And Kuroko was politely cutting. Akashi – well, Akashi was Akashi.  
   
Shuzo leaned down, caught up his jersey from where he had laid it across the Rakuzan bench, and swung it over his shoulder. “Right. Sorry. Want to talk about it here or somewhere else?”  
   
Midorima glared at him. “Here is fine, thank you,” he said, stiffly.  
   
“Okay, shoot.”  
   
The glare intensified.  
   
Shuzo gave it some thought. Awareness dawned. “I’m not that point guard from Seirin! It was an honest mistake.”  
   
A pause, and then Midorima decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “I am glad that you have returned to basketball, senpai,” he said. The tone was still stiff, but warmer than before.  
   
Shuzo waited. He was sure that the sentiment was sincere, but that it wasn’t the point of the discussion.  
   
“I am unsure how aware you are of what transpired at Teiko after you left –”  
   
“Stop right there,” Shuzo interrupted, sharply.  
   
“It is important.”  
   
“Of course it is. I don’t want to know.”  
   
“To deliberately choose ignorance is unwise.”  
   
He felt hot. And cold. The sensations twisted into pressure behind his eyes. He shut them, reached up to knead at the bridge of his nose. To deliberately choose ignorance. His mother’s voice, sad but cruel – and she hadn’t meant it, what she said, he knew that with a certainty born from a childhood of being loved – was like claws in the back of his mind.  
   
“Are you ill?” Midorima asked, tone torn now between irritation and concern.  
   
His kouhai were unique. If anything, that was true.  
   
Shuzo made himself smile, ignored how tight it must look on his face. “You wouldn’t believe how many rumours I’ve heard about Teiko. It sounded like you guys really went off the bend there. But it’s not my business. If you’re going to ask me to fix Akashi or leave Rakuzan or some shit like that –”  
   
“Neither of those describe my intentions,” Midorima said, flatly.  
   
“Then what are your intentions? Just cut the riddles and get to the point.”  
   
It was an unfair accusation. Midorima would have gotten to the point sooner if Shuzo hadn’t interrupted him. But he was too agitated to take it back or apologize.  
   
Midorima was quiet for a moment. And then he said, “I merely thought you might want the truth, as opposed to the rumours. As much of the truth as I am qualified to give, in any respect. I apologize. I may have approached you at an inappropriate time for this matter.”  
   
Guilt came with increased rationality. Shuzo sighed, removed his hand from the bridge of his nose, and took the pounding in his head as karmic punishment. “No, I was being a jerk. I’m the one who should apologize. You’re right. I do want to know the truth at some point. Just – not today.”  
   
“You seem – stressed, senpai,” Midorima said, carefully. His glasses glinted in the brightness of the overhead lights.  
   
“It’s nothing.”  
   
“I was sorry to hear about your father.”  
   
“Thank you.”  
   
They stood there, looking at each other. Eventually, Midorima nodded. “I will pursue this matter with you at a later date. Thank you for the match today.”  
   
“Thank you. For trying to tell me what happened.”  
   
On the train back to Kyoto, Akashi received a message on his phone. Shuzo, sitting opposite him, watched his expression as he read it, and wondered if banging his head on the back of his seat would be too much of an indicator to Mayuzumi and the rest that something was wrong.  
   
They were the only two of them in their booth. Nebuya was off somewhere, probably in the dinner car, and Hayama had gone with him. Mibuchi and Mayuzumi were reading in the booth opposite. The coach had left for the toilet.  
   
Akashi’s gaze was measuring.  
   
Shuzo ignored him, closed his eyes to go to sleep.  
   
   
   
The Spring Tournament took place in early February. The least important tournament of the year, held as it was after the third-years had retired and before the new first-years had come in, it was usually the least well-attended and the least well-participated of the four basketball tournaments.  
   
Chihiro wasn’t altogether surprised when Rakuzan swept easily to the finals. The third years of the other top schools had retired after the Winter Cup. Only Seirin, which was, like Rakuzan, composed of only second-year and first-year starters, presented much of a challenge. As Akashi said in the locker room before their first match of the tournament, it was the expected outcome that Seirin and Rakuzan would face off against each other in the finals.  
   
The tournament would take place over the course of a long weekend, from Thursday to Sunday. Akashi, Chihiro knew, would get his homework from his teachers and complete it over the course of the weekend. It was Chihiro’s plan to rush it all on Sunday night. He suspected his teachers already knew that that would be the plan of the majority of the basketball team.  
   
Well, Nijimura Shuzo was an unknown. Chihiro didn’t know him well enough yet to guess at what he might do.  
   
On Wednesday afternoom, the starters gathered by the coach that would take them to the train station, where they would board the train to Tokyo. Chihiro joined them, sports bag over his shoulder and luggage bag dragging behind him. He set it on the ground and crouched down, bored.  
   
Akashi and Nijimura had yet to arrive.  
   
Hayama, leaning against the wall beside the gate, took advantage of their absence to gossip. “Wanna bet that they’re dating?”  
   
Nebuya grunted. “Who?”  
   
Mibuchi sounded irritated. “Kotaro, we’ve gone over this.”  
   
“Gone over what?” Chihiro said, partly to further irritate Mibuchi, partly out of genuine curiosity.  
   
Hayama crossed his arms over his chest, nodded sagely. “Akashi and Nijimura. Wanna bet that they’re dating? I mean, Akashi plans matches with him. I’ve seen them. And I heard that Nijimura is always in Akashi’s room. Playing shogi. But maybe they’re playing something else.”  
   
Something inside Chihiro stretches tight and tense. “Who did you hear that from?” he said, tone flat.  
   
“What?” Hayama blinked at him.  
   
Mibuchi, with more situational awareness, said, quickly, “Not from Yamada and his lot. Right, Kotaro?”  
   
Colour rose high in Hayama’s face. He spluttered. “Hell, no. I don't listen to Yamada! After what he did to Akashi – but it’s fine, isn’t it? To speculate. I mean, Yamada likes to talk shit, that’s obvious. But Akashi and Nijimura being together – that’s just normal, isn’t it? And it would be good if –”  
   
Chihiro folded in on himself. His ears were loud with Yamada’s poisonous voice. The memory of Akashi’s face, blank, almost bored, as he pushed himself up onto his knees. The blood, both darker and redder than his hair, dripping from his face onto the ground. “Shut up,” he said. It came out harsher than nearly anything else Chihiro had said in his life. “You have no idea –”  
   
Kotaro was determined to finish. His voice drowned out Chihiro’s. “It would be good if Akashi were happy!”  
   
A long moment.  
   
Mibuchi said, tone forcefully even, “Shuzo-kun. Sei-chan. Ah – you’re late.”  
   
Nijimura Shuzo’s dark gaze flickered between all of them, paused for a moment on Chihiro and Kotaro. His eyes were sharp and heavy. He glanced behind him. Chihiro’s gut twisted as Akashi stepped up beside his ex-captain.  
   
Akashi said, deceptively mild, “Chihiro, are you all right?”  
   
Chihiro blinked at him, then realized that he was still on the ground, curled into himself like a child. He suppressed a flinch. “I’m fine,” he snapped.  
   
“I hope that everyone is as ready to win as you seemingly are to gossip,” Akashi said.  
   
“We are, Sei-chan,” Mibuchi said, in place of Hayama, who had gone pale.  
   
Nijimura shrugged, as if he had had nothing to do with the scene at all, and preceded all of them up onto the coach.  
   
Later, once they had boarded the train, Chihiro’s first thought was to sit down, take out his light novel, and read himself into a world infinitely simpler and more interesting than the constant fucking drama his life had been since meeting Akashi.  
   
The thought was shot to hell when Akashi said, before Chihiro had spent less than half an hour on his book, “Chihiro, if you would sit with me for a moment. I have something I would like to discuss with you.”  
   
Nijimura was already sitting across from Akashi. They were nearly always together, Chihiro realized. Over the past few weeks since Nijimura had joined the basketball team – it had become more usual than unusual to find them together outside classes and after practice. Annoyance twisted inside him at the fact that the realization had had to be brought on by Hayama of all people. But this was Akashi. It hadn’t crossed Chihiro’s mind that the arrogant bastard could have friends. Annoyance mixed with bitterness. But then, of course, Akashi had been friends with the Generation of Miracles, even if that had somehow become screwed up. He had been friends with Kuroko Tetsuya – the boy Chihiro was supposed to replace.  
   
Nothing was denied to Akashi Seijuro.  
   
At the captain’s pronouncement, Nijimura stood up easily, stretched his arms over his head, and said, “Well. I’ll go to the dinner car. Have a nice talk, kids.”  
   
“Thank you, Nijimura-san,” Akashi said, politely.  
   
“I’m the same age as you,” Chihiro pointed out, unnecessarily.  
   
Nijimura smiled. A pleasant smile, not at all hostile, and it still made Chihiro’s hackles rise. He hated people like Nijimura. Like Akashi. Their natural self-confidence; their comfortable indifference.  
   
Akashi said, pulling Chihiro back into himself by the coldness in his voice, “Chihiro, please sit.”  
   
Nijimura was on his way out of the train car. As he passed by Hayama, the other boy jumped up to follow him. After a pause and a brief struggle, Nijimura acquiesced to a joint venture. Nebuya invited himself along.  
   
Chihiro was left more or less alone – Mibuchi hardly counted, and their coach had left for the smoking car a long time ago – with the captain whose existence his fucked-up mind couldn’t decide whether to hate or tolerate.  
   
“What do you want?” he snapped.  
   
“I do not like to bring this to your attention. However, it is better that you are made aware. Three weeks ago, Yamada Isamu approached me.”  
   
Every muscle in Chihiro’s body seized. He felt his lungs constrict. Cursed himself. He hated being this weak. “I knew he was back,” he said, curtly. “His dad sent him to cool his heels in some posh boarding school, and then caved in to his tears and wailing, right?”  
   
“An impolite summary of events, but yes.”  
   
“I don’t care about impolite.” Each word felt bitten off. He turned his head away from Akashi’s neutral heterochromatic gaze.  
   
“It would be insensitive to expect you to.”  
   
“He approached you. Did he – why are you telling me this now?” At once, he felt a surge of something painful – anger, or fear, or spite; he refused to categorise the emotion – and sat up straight in his seat. “He and his cronies didn’t – ”  
   
“I am capable of handling myself. Nonetheless, you need not concern yourself. As I said, the incident occurred three weeks ago. I have no doubt that it was simply a childish attempt by Isamu to reassure himself of his power over me. Nijimura-san dealt with him at the time of our encounter. And I have dealt with him since.”  
   
“Dealt with him,” Chihiro said. The sick feeling still churned in the depths of his stomach. For himself, or for Akashi, or for Yamada and his cronies, he didn’t know. This was why he hated dealing with anything associated with Akashi; it screwed him up, made all his emotions questionable and ambiguous.  
   
“As you will recall, the incident that happened a few months ago was greeted with indifference by the school officials. Given that Isamu’s father was chairman of the school board, and that my family has little influence in Kyoto, it was not unexpected.”  
   
“I recall.”  
   
“Of course. Your cousin’s partner was quite incensed.”  
   
Chihiro redirected his attention from the honestly less than stimulating night-time scenery outside the window in order to glare at Akashi. Shouhei considered violence ordinary, and expected Chihiro to handle himself; Nao-san thought in a far more protective, spiteful, and vindictive vein. It had taken all of Chihiro’s powers of persuasion from his hospital bed to persuade his cousin’s boyfriend that he did not want to take legal action.  
   
“I think that Koizumi-san will make a good prosecutor,” Akashi said.  
   
“Get to the point,” Chihiro answered, through gritted teeth. “How did you deal with Yamada? You didn’t deal with him all those months ago. What was so fucking different this time?”  
   
It was a low blow, and Chihiro knew it. But Akashi tended to bring out the worst in him. Especially Akashi when he was being all-knowing and childishly superior, as he was now. It spoke of a comfort level in Chihiro’s presence that Chihiro was, frankly, uncomfortable with. Because Akashi was constantly rewriting and renegotiating their relationship. From using Chihiro like a tool to achieve victory over his old teammates, to buying Chihiro a signed copy of one of his favourite light novels for his birthday, to being concerned about him after they had both been beaten up. It was scrambling Chihiro’s every brain cell. It was shitty. It was confusing. It was unfair.  
   
Akashi’s gaze narrowed. The fluorescent overhead lights in the train car picked out crimson highlights in his hair. There was a flat, quiet tension in the air. It crossed Chihiro’s mind, in that moment, that the quiet was such that Mibuchi must have either left or be literally holding his breath. The thought was somewhere between amusing and terrifying.  
   
“I underestimated Isamu and his followers.”  
   
A simple statement. It incensed Chihiro for reasons he didn’t want to comprehend.  
   
Akashi observed the expression on his face, and then laughed, quietly.  
   
The unexpectedness of it was jarring. Chihiro snapped, “What the hell do you think is funny about this?”  
   
“You are very different from Nijimura-san,” Akashi said.  
   
Nijimura-san. Chihiro blanked his expression, reminded himself how much he did not care about Akashi’s personal life. Hayama might want Akashi to be happy, because for some reason the other three who had been here before Nijimura cared about their first-year captain. Were, to an extent, protective of him as they were of each other. Chihiro had never put himself into their equation. Had never given much thought to how he fit into the starting lineup of Rakuzan’s basketball team. Anyway, Akashi’s attitude to him in the beginning of their relationship had been too cold and too utilitarian for Chihiro to think of his elevation to the first string as anything but a cog in Akashi’s plan for complete victory.  
   
Chihiro was too detached from the entire charade of team camaraderie to care.  
   
“He’s kind of like you,” Chihiro said, in response.  
   
Akashi blinked in surprise. “Oh, is that so?”  
   
“Cold, aloof – it’s been three weeks and it’s like there’s a fucking wall around him. Mibuchi and Hayama are non-plussed by it.”  
   
Akashi considered this. “And Nebuya?”  
   
“He doesn’t much care.”  
   
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Chihiro.”  
   
Chihiro snorted. “You knew.”  
   
“You are very intuitive when it comes to people. Your insight is always valuable.”  
   
His entire self-conception was falling apart around him. Chihiro stood up, abruptly. He was taller than Akashi; his shadow fell across the captain’s face. In that shadow, he registered, with the same melancholy tone that one of his light novel characters might register it, that Akashi looked very young. He was fifteen years old still. Chihiro was sixteen. “Can I go now?”  
   
Akashi said, “Of course. I understand that our topic of conversation deviated slightly in the last few minutes, however, please be assured once again that I have dealt with Isamu and his friends.” And then, he turned his head from Chihiro and picked up the headphones he had set on the seat beside him.  
   
Mozart, Chihiro thought, uncharitably. Maybe Beethoven.  
   
As he made a move to leave, one thing that had been niggling at the back of his mind came into fully realized form, and he glanced back at Akashi. “What did you mean, Nijimura dealt with Yamada at your ‘encounter’. You didn’t deal with him yourself?”  
   
Akashi’s fingers tightened and relaxed so quickly on the sides of his headphones that Chihiro, if he were less perceptive, would have thought that he had imagined the muscle movement. When he spoke, his voice was neutral even to Chihiro’s ears. “I was preoccupied at the time. And his insults were childish.”  
   
Noisy footsteps in the train car in front of theirs. Hayama bounded back in, Mibuchi close on his heels – so Mibuchi had left after all, ostensibly to find the others – and Nebuya following directly after with an armful of snacks.  
   
Akashi gave the last of them a bemused look. “Careful, Eikichi. You will start to resemble Atsushi before long.”  
   
“Murasakibara?” Nebuya grunted. “Not a hamster, Akashi.”  
   
“I am confused as to why they must be synonymous. Atsushi is of course different from Atsushi.”  
   
Chihiro decided to leave it to Nebuya to figure out which ‘Atsushi’ in that sentence referred to the hamster, and which one to the Yosen player. He elbowed past Hayama and Mibuchi and returned to his light novel, discarded at Akashi’s summons.  
   
Hayama said, excitedly, “You won’t believe who we met on the way here, Akashi!”  
   
“Kotaro,” Mibuchi said. “Shuzo-kun asked us not to –”  
   
“And since when do you think we should keep anything from darling Sei-chan?” Hayama retorted, tone laden with sarcasm.  
   
The two of them glared at each other.  
   
Mibuchi began, stiffly, “There is a difference between –”  
   
“What has Nijimura-san asked you to keep from me?” Akashi said, pleasantly.  
   
Chihiro sunk down low in his seat and attempted to focus on the words in his book.  
   
Eventually, when Mibuchi had been forced to explain the situation, and Akashi got up to go to the dinner car, Chihiro gave up on reading and followed. Damn curiosity.  
   
   
   
Nijimura was sitting with his younger brother in a private booth at the back of the car. As private as a booth could get in a public train, at any rate. He was speaking in a low, intense voice. Focused enough that he didn’t immediately register Akashi and Chihiro’s arrival in the car. “Kou, you can’t do this kind of thing. Kaa-san was worried out of her –” a pause, as Nijimura swallowed a curse word, “ – mind. I called her. She’ll come to pick you up at the station.”  
   
A pause, as if Nijimura was waiting for a reply. There came none.  
   
Nijimura Kou was staring at the table. He resembled his older brother, this was the first thing that Chihiro noticed about him. Not just the fine dark hair and slim athletic build that the girls in their year had obsessed about for the first week of Nijimura’s novel presence in Rakuzan, but also the cool practicality that seemed to radiate from him, even at an age ranging from twelve to fourteen.  
   
“Nijimura-san,” Akashi said, breaking the silence.  
   
Their teammate looked up at them. At once, his clear dark eyes narrowed, and Chihiro could sense a cold fury – directed more at Akashi than at him, he thought, with some satisfaction – spark to life. “Akashi,” Nijimura said, calmly. “I was having a conversation with my brother.”  
   
“I don’t mean to intrude,” Akashi said, equally calmly. There was another layer to the sentence that Chihiro attempted to but couldn’t fully dissect.  
   
Whatever it was, it made Nijimura’s fury recede slightly. “What is it then?”  
   
“Yamada Isamu,” Akashi said. “He hurt you?”  
   
Chihiro had, in the moment of Nijimura’s unexpected reaction to their arrival, forgotten the entire reason for his curiosity. He glanced down, found that Nijimura had instinctively put his hands under the table.  
   
When, at Akashi’s commanding gaze, he brought them out for inspection, Chihiro was fascinated to see that there was a starburst of blood in the middle of the left palm, leaking more blood all the way down to his fingers.  
   
“You will not be able to play,” Akashi observed.  
   
“It’s minor. It just looks bad.” Nijimura said.  
   
They looked at each other.  
   
Eventually, Akashi said, “Very well. You will not play in the first two matches.”  
   
“Done,” Nijimura said.  
   
The calm of the situation was getting on Chihiro’s nerves. He said, crudely, “Yamada stabbed you, and that’s all the reaction we’re going to have?”  
   
“It was an accident,” Nijimura’s brother said. His arms were crossed over his chest. He was wearing a gakuran uniform, from a middle school somewhere in Tokyo. Chihiro thought he recognised it; Nao-san’s younger half-sister, Sahiye-san, attended it too. “Who are you?” Half-polite, half-aggressive.  
   
Nijimura banged his palm on the table; his brother winced. “Manners, you brat. These are my yearmate and my kouhai from Rakuzan.”  
   
Chihiro was more interested in what the boy had said before that. Every muscle tensing, he said, “Hey, kid, are you friends with Yamada? Defending him like that.”  
   
The kid was silent.  
   
Akashi looked at Nijimura. “I understand from Reo that you found them outside the dinner car. And that Isamu appeared to be about to assault your brother. You caught his arm, and he stabbed you with a pair of scissors in his jacket.”  
   
“That’s right,” Nijimura said. He still sounded mildly displeased. At Akashi. “Is it something you need to worry about? You already got him to leave our school. I can handle this brat –” he jerked his head at his brother, “ – myself.”  
   
Nijimura Kou said, tone burning, “Yamada-san wasn’t about to assault me. We were arguing, that’s all. I had it under control.”  
   
“Control, my ass,” Nijimura said. Blood was starting to drip from his hand onto the grey tabletop.  
   
Akashi said, “I am merely interested in ensuring that Isamu does not believe that just because I am off-limits, he can continue to exert power over me through causing annoyance to my teammates.” A pause, and then, “Your injury is not light, Nijimura-san. It should be bandaged.”  
   
This was almost sweet, Akashi being concerned in his half-assed, screwed-up way about Nijimura. Chihiro had seen this concern exercised on others in the basketball team before, but never in this utterly roundabout way. It was as if Akashi was attempting to balance being concerned about Nijimura with believing that Nijimura needed to solve his problems on his own. Chihiro thought that he should find a bathroom and gag.  
   
Nijimura’s brother hunched up in his seat. He looked directly at Akashi. “You look familiar. Are you that Akashi Seijuro that Yamada-san talks about? You don’t look like –” He flushed. Less in embarassment and more as if he were angry at himself.  
   
“Finish the sentence,” Nijimura said.  
   
Chihiro was surprised at how much steel Akashi’s ex-captain managed to compress into those three words. The surprise almost overrode the sharp, hard twist in his gut.  
   
Akashi held up a hand. Chihiro recognised the gesture. Akashi didn’t want him interfering in the conversation.  
   
Torn between fury and relief, he subsided.  
   
Nijimura’s brother said, “I don’t – think the way Yamada-san thinks about – that.”  
   
“Is that so?” Nijimura said.  
   
“Of course I don’t!”  
   
A long, freezing pause. And then Nijimura stood up, abruptly. “Kou, I expected better from you. Skipping school to take an unannounced day trip to Kyoto – you are fourteen fucking years old. Grow up. Kaa-san has too much to deal with already.” If possible, his tone grew colder. “And stay away from your new friend. If you believe that he’s good news of any kind, then you’re out of your mind. I’ve heard the things he says. He’s trash.”  
   
“You don’t know anything.” Nijimura Kou sounded very young in that moment, voice shaking with barely suppressed emotion. “Just because you act older, like you’re trying to replace Tou-san – well, you can’t. And it’s so fucking arrogant and selfish of you to even try. Kaa-san’s right. You should just stay away from us.”  
   
Quiet. Chihiro’s instinctive disgust at mention of Yamada shifted into a tense discomfort. He supposed it was good that the dinner car was nearly empty; even though Nijimura’s brother hadn’t been speaking very loudly, every word had been clear with conviction.  
   
Nijimura let his brother finish without interruption.  
   
Kou shrunk into himself.  
   
Beside Chihiro, Akashi hadn’t moved a muscle.  
   
After a moment, which felt simultaneously expanded and compressed into a single breath in Chihiro’s lungs, Nijimura said, “Kaa-san will pick you up at the station. Stay away from that jerk. I mean it.” And then he turned away, gaze brushing over Chihiro to look hard at Akashi.  
   
Akashi nodded at some silent indicator, and they went outside.  
   
Kou stared at the cloudy surface of the table. Eventually, he got up, looked at Chihiro, who was still there, strangely rooted to the spot. Uncertainty and misery flashed in the kid’s dark gaze, shifted into a bland irritation. “Who are you?” he snapped. “Yamada-san never mentioned you.”  
   
Anger always came unsummoned. Along with the memory of fear. Chihiro preferred the first to the second. He blanked his expression, in the way that he knew gave people the creeps because of how not-there-almost-dead he seemed, and stared Nijimura’s brother in the face. “No,” he said, “I don’t think he would. I was just the dumb bastard who got in the way of his petty little vendetta.”  
   
“What?”  
   
Chihiro snorted, let the derision and the contempt show through sharper than acid. “I’m not your brother, kid, and I really don’t give a shit. You can hang out with Yamada if you want. Screw you. But I am going to tell you this. You think he’s a good person, that the sun shines out of his ass? Think again.”  
   
“I’ve heard things about Akashi-san,” Kou bit out. “He’s not a good person either.”  
   
Chihiro stepped back from the table. “I didn’t say he was.”  
   
“My brother’s not a good person either.” Defiant, challenging.  
   
Chihiro didn’t bother to suppress the urge to laugh.  
   
Kou stood up, chair clattering behind him. “You don’t know anything about me. Or my family.”  
   
“I’m not your therapist,” Chihiro shrugged. He had gotten the rise out of the kid that he had wanted to get. The interest had gone. Slowly, he sucked back in the venom, returned the lifelessness to his being that people found disconcerting, and turned away from Nijimura’s brother.  
   
   
   
“I can handle myself,” Nijimura-san said in the empty Rakuzan train car. Seijuro had asked Reo and the others to leave for the moment, and Chihiro had yet to return. Nijimura-san looked smaller than Seijuro was used to, in the emptiness lit by the overhead fluorescent lights. He had rolled up the sleeve of his white-blue jersey jacket, and was tending to his hand with expert quickness. Seijuro sat opposite him, watching carefully.  
   
Nijimura-san looked up at Seijuro as he pulled the bandage tight around his palm. His clear grey eyes were cool with his particular brand of fury. “I know the others talked. But you didn’t have to come. Isn’t that what you always say – let me deal with my own shit.”  
   
Seijuro answered, tone even. “Yamada Isamu is a problem of mine. And as captain of this team, your ability to play basketball is naturally my concern.”  
   
A tense quiet settled between them, as Nijimura-san cut the bandage and checked its tightness before beginning to put away the instruments of first-aid. Seijuro’s ribs felt unusually tight. It had been a constant feeling in his last year at Teiko. This angry helplessness that crystallised into imperious, cold self-control. He had been forced to watch Daiki handle himself. Tetsuya, Ryota, Satsuki, Atsushi, Shintaro. He had been able to do exactly nothing. Except ensure that they split up. All of them, to different schools, so that competition would come back into their lives.  
   
The lid of the first-aid kit shut with a solid click.  
   
“Don’t look like that,” Nijimura-san said.  
   
Seijuro was confused. “What do you mean?”  
   
Nijimura-san’s gaze was softer than it had been. “You remember the practice match with Shutoku? I talked to Midorima.”  
   
“I see,” Seijuro said, neutrally. He could estimate what that conversation would have been about. He supposed he should be relieved. At least, from Shintaro, the alleged truth about Teiko would have received a more objective delivery than what Tetsuya would have given.  
   
“I asked him not to tell me,” Nijimura-san said. “Got quite pissed at him, actually.”  
   
Seijuro blinked at him.  
   
“So I don’t know for sure what happened. But. For what it’s worth. I am sorry. For leaving you alone to deal with that lot.”  
   
Seijuro could feel his self-control shifting, morphing into something dark and heavy. Disappointment and irritation and anger. Over the past three weeks, he had reassured himself, in their not infrequent contact with each other even outside practice, that Nijimura-san was still Nijimura-san. Two years had not changed his former captain beyond recognition. Still, people were people. Narrow-minded, pitying of others’ apparent plights, and desiring of moral and material superiority in every respect.  
   
Seijuro should not have expected anything different, even from Nijimura Shuzo.  
   
He said, politely, “You had a responsibility to your family. I had mine as captain. Your presence would have changed nothing. There is no need to apologize.”  
   
“You’re angry,” Nijimura-san observed.  
   
The diasappointment, heavier than it should be, made him itch to strike his former captain. Seijuro suppressed it with a vengeance. He had never struck his teammates. He never would. “If you are finished,” he said, instead. “I will inform Reo and the others that they may return. We will be in Tokyo in another hour. It would be advisable for them to get some rest.”  
   
“Akashi, wait.”  
   
The tone was clear, authoritative. Seijuro’s hackles rose and he stiffened. No one issued commands to him.  
   
But Nijimura-san’s gaze, though cool, was light, not restraining. And he had extended a hand, palm upwards. A request, rather than a command.  
   
Seijuro waited, expression bland. His responsibility as captain ensured that he owed a teammate that much.  
   
Nijimura-san said, “I’m not sorry for you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I care about you. I’m sorry that you were alone in that situation. That’s all.”  
   
The words were almost bitten off. Uncomfortable, coldly impatient, but direct and honest in that unique way that Seijuro would always associate with his captain. Nijimura-san would always say what needed to be said. Whether it meant acknowledging the Generation of Miracles’ eclipse of his own talent; whether it meant handing the captaincy over to Seijuro after only six months in the position; whether it meant retiring from basketball to focus on his family – Seijuro had never seen Nijimura-san attempt to spare himself pain.  
   
“Why did you refuse to listen to Shintaro’s story?” Seijuro asked, abruptly.  
   
They were only two feet apart, sitting opposite each other. The sky was dark outside the windows. Nijimura-san smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Why didn't you say anything when Yamada was insulting you?”  
   
It had been three weeks, and still Nijimura-san refused to let the subject go. “I have dealt with Isamu.” Seijuro felt his glance involuntarily drawn to the bandage on Nijimura-san’s hand. “Evidently, I will have to deal with him more thoroughly. But my point stands.”  
   
A shrug. Nijimura-san leaned against the back of his seat. “What happened at Teiko, happened. I can’t do anything about it. And I have enough on my plate right now.”  
   
“Your family,” Seijuro said.  
   
Direct, final. “Don’t even go there.”  
   
A command. Seijuro narrowed his eyes.  
   
Nijimura-san let out a slow breath. Met his gaze. “Unless you’re planning on telling me what exactly went down with Yamada – because I only know the bare outline of it – don’t count on me confessing my screwed-up issues.”  
   
“An exchange,” Seijuro observed, coldly. “How mercenary, Shuzo.”  
   
“Trust isn’t a one way gangplank, Sei,” his ex-captain said.  
   
The deliberate use of Seijuro’s first name – the abbreviation of it – didn’t escape his notice. “I was under the impression you valued manners. You were insistent on it with your younger brother.”  
   
“If using my first name without an honorific is some kind of insult, then consider it returned.”  
   
They glared at each other.  
   
“I act as such with all of my teammates. It was not an insult.”  
   
“Really. Then you won’t mind me using yours.”  
   
There was a sharp knock on the door to the train car. Kotaro’s voice. “Um. Akashi, Reo ate peanuts and needs his allergy medicine. Can we come inside?”  
   
Seijuro broke his gaze away from Shuzo’s and reached for his headphones, which he had discarded upon Reo’s explanation of the events that had taken place in the dinner car. He kept his movements casual. Dismissive.  
   
Shuzo’s tone, as he replied Kotaro, was wry. “Hayama, we’re done. You can come in.” He stood up, leaving the first-aid kit on the seat beside him, and moved towards the door. “You need help? I know how to work an Epipen.”  
   
Hayama was quiet. And then he said, as if surprised, “That would be great. Ah, I know how to use one, but Reo always complains that I stick it too hard.”  
   
“My younger brother used to be allergic to nuts – he’s grown out of it now.”  
   
Firm and soothing. Seijuro had heard that tone countless times before. That was who Shuzo was. Always responsible. Always professional. Always just that bit distant. Soon after they first met, after Seijuro had been chosen as vice-captain but before Shuzo had handed over his captaincy, Seijuro had theorised to himself that it was because of his captain’s unusual maturity. Nijimura Shuzo had spent his younger years as a delinquent, then spent his early middle school years as a well-liked first-stringer in a dangerously competitive school, and then discovered that his father was terminally ill.  
   
These circumstances, Seijuro felt, had honed a naturally intuitive understanding of people and situations. It had also taught a naturally kind and responsible young teenager that people, whether adults or children his own age, could be trusted only to a certain degree. Likely, in the two years since Seijuro had last seen him, these traits had only been further enhanced by the pressure of being the eldest child in what had effectively become a single-parent household, and by the alien strangeness of moving to and living in a foreign land.  
   
Psychological analysis. As if a person could be explained by their background and their experiences. Seijuro hated it when it was used on himself.  
   
After around ten minutes, Shuzo returned, took his seat across from Seijuro, and focused his attention on the darkness outside the windows.  
   
“How is Reo?” Seijuro said, pulling his headphones down to his neck.  
   
“He’s fine,” Shuzo said. “Wasn’t serious.”  
   
“Thank you for taking care of him.”  
   
A flicker of surprise, and then Shuzo smiled. It was quick and small. “It’s not something you have to thank me for.”  
   
Seijuro held his gaze for a moment longer, and then closed his eyes, let the soft violin music in his headphones wash over his senses.  
   
   
   
The tournament went as Akashi had expected, for the most part. Shuzo stayed out of the first two matches. Rakuzan and Seirin reached the semi-finals without any trouble. Seirin went up against Shutoku, and Rakuzan went up against Yosen. Yosen gave some trouble; Shuzo found it particularly satisfying to play against Tatsuya for the first time in a long while. But Rakuzan won that match without undue struggle. And, in the finals, they won again, against Seirin.  
   
With that final victory for the year, the rest of the spring term went by without much incident. Shuzo’s hand healed; Yamada Isamu stayed far away from Akashi; and Akashi chose Shuzo as his vice-captain for the coming year.  
   
They continued using each other’s first names. It had become something of a bet. Shuzo cursed himself for the stupid childishness of it, but he wasn’t about to back down. Not that Akashi – Sei – would gloat. It was below the emperor to gloat. Still, something in Shuzo rebelled against letting his kouhai have this win.  
   
In the last week of school, Shuzo shrugged on a light blue school sweater, left his own room and dropped in on Akashi’s. He sat on the neatly made bed and watched as Akashi went through plans for the spring training camp. It would be a short camp – two days long – and its main purpose was more for teambuilding than for anything else. The season had just finished; the basketball coaches at Rakuzan were adamant that the team should get a proper holiday before training recommenced in the spring.  
   
“It sounds fine,” Shuzo said, after Akashi had finished running through everything from logistics to training schedules to teambuilding activities. He was tired, an immeasurable bone-deep tiredness that had finally registered only at the end of his last exam. It made it difficult to think seriously about anything except the soreness in his muscles from the afternoon basketball practice, and the irritating difficulty of keeping his eyes open.  
   
Akashi was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, it was with a faint amusement. “Your exams finished today, Shuzo.”  
   
Shuzo opened one eye properly to glare at him. “Not everyone keeps their scholarship by virtue of being a genius in everything.”  
   
“You are intelligent enough.”  
   
“I’m flattered,” Shuzo said, dryly. He gave up his sitting position on Akashi’s bed to flop down, legs and arms sprawling, on the dark blue sheets. “Just for that, you can forget about sleeping. I refuse to get up.”  
   
“Not even to play shogi,” Akashi said.  
   
“I thought we gave up on shogi. We’re on to Western chess now. Which I maybe suck a bit less at.”  
   
Sei had set down the training camp plans and shifted his chair to better look at Shuzo. In the dim lighting that characterised all the dormitory bedrooms, his hair gleamed a warm dark red. The same colour as his right eye. His left was a dark gold.  
   
There was about two inches of space between them.  
   
Shuzo, his brain connected only sluggishly to his muscles at this point in time, pushed himself up onto an elbow and stretched out his other arm to touch his kouhai’s face.  
   
A breath. Two. Akashi’s – Sei’s – skin was cool to the touch. Shuzo slid his hand upwards, brushing over the smooth curve of an ear, and then tangling his fingers briefly in soft, short strands of hair. He remembered again what Tatsuya had told him – that Akashi had cut his hair with a pair of scissors and then attacked Kagami with them – and felt a surge of something between affection, amusement, and anger. Akashi made him feel complicated things, he had discovered over the past few weeks. Difficult-to-name things. Pain and warmth rolled into one.  
   
Sei caught his hand at the wrist, stilled its movement. “Shuzo,” he said.  
   
It was stupid, how used he had become to the sound of his name in Akashi’s mouth. The familiar, unfamiliar sound of it. As if, when Sei said it, it took on new meaning.  
   
Sei’s fingers were gentle, firm. Shuzo could feel his pulse speed up, beating against the strong grip.  
   
Ah, he thought. He remembered this feeling. More complicated than it had been, the first time. More difficult. More painful. Because nothing that involved Akashi Seijuro or the Generation of Miracles in general could ever be simple. Once stripped of all those confusing factors, however, as it was now in Shuzo’s half-asleep, post-tournament-and-exam-stress brain, the feeling was one easily recognised.  
   
Fuck.  
   
Before his brain could move from making that sudden mental connection to executing a rapid reconnection with his muscles, Shuzo had jerked into a straight sitting position. His hand ripped itself from Sei’s grip. Roughly.  
   
They stared at each other.  
   
Shuzo’s every breath sounded loud in his ears. His blood ran hot.  
   
“You look unwell,” Akashi said, his tone measured with concern.  
   
Shuzo struggled to keep his own voice even. Difficult, when his fingers were trembling. He clenched his hands. “I have to go. Going back home tomorrow, you know. I have to pack.”  
   
Akashi’s gaze narrowed.  
   
Shuzo met it. Forced his breathing to calm. “You don’t need anything else, do you?”  
   
A pause. And then Akashi moved his chair back. The increased distance felt both like a minor loss and a major relief.  
   
Akashi said, “I will let you know if I do. Good night, Shuzo.”  
   
“Night –” Shuzo hesitated just a moment, then made himself smile, “ – Sei.”  
   
Immediately afterwards, he escaped outside into the cool spring night. The landing in front of the scholarship students’ rooms was empty, lit only by faint light where it escaped from between the curtains on the students’ windows. Shuzo returned to his own room, shut the door behind him, and leaned against the dark wood.  
   
The space was dark; he had switched off the lights before going to Akashi’s room.  
   
He fumbled in the single deep pocket of his sweater and fished out his phone. Dialled Tatsuya’s number and waited for his friend to pick up.  
   
“Hey, Shuu,” Tatsuya said, on the other end of the line. His tone was cheerful. “I’m done packing. I bet you’re not. When are you heading back to Tokyo tomorrow? I was thinking we could meet up.”  
   
Shuzo realized, in that second, that brief pause in which Tatsuya ceased speaking and waited for him to reply, that he had no idea what to say. Calling Tatsuya had been an automatic thing. An instinctive reaction.  
   
His friend said, carefully, into the overlong silence. “Shuu?”  
   
Shuzo pressed his free hand horizontally across his eyes.  
   
“Is something wrong?” A sharper note.  
   
He needed to say something. “I’m fine.”  
   
“Bullshit.” Perfectly even. “You call me and do nothing but breathe into the receiver for thirty seconds and expect me to believe that?”  
   
Opposite the door was the basin and mirror that was a staple in every dormitory bedroom. Shuzo could see his own reflection in the pale moonlight filtering through the windows of his room. He pushed off the door and moved to sit on his desk chair. Put his head on his arms. “I was just thinking – you want to meet up in Tokyo? You’ll come down from Hokkaido to see Kagami, anyway.”  
   
Quiet. And then, “Will you tell me what’s bugging you?”  
   
“I need to sort it out for myself, first.”  
   
“Is this about your family? Has your mother called you?”  
   
The thing about Tatsuya that Shuzo had liked almost from the moment he met him – his friend was relentless. Tatsuya had grown up knowing that he had no significant talent in something that was dearly important to him. He had grown up understanding that no matter how hard he practiced, no matter how perfect his technique or his timing or his stamina, he would always come second to those with greater potential. And that had never deterred him. It was a determination that Tatsuya took with him into every area of his life.  
   
He didn’t know when to stop.  
   
Shuzo said, “My mother doesn’t talk to me unless she has to. Not since the divorce. And definitely not since – that.” It came out bitter. His earlier mood of sudden shock and creeping anxiety was shifting into something darker, harder, slimier. He lifted his head off his arms and leaned back in his chair. Reminded of his mother, his revelation about Akashi was less than overwhelming. He said, the words sounding flatter than they should, “I – like Sei.”  
   
A hitch in his friend’s breathing gave away his surprise. “What?”  
   
“I have a crush on my kouhai. Akashi Seijuro.”  
   
There was a long pause. And then Tatsuya started to laugh.  
   
Shuzo’s brain gave up, tired from basketball and exams and the stress of this last conversation. And against all logical reaction, he felt himself smiling.  
   
   
   
On the fourth day of the spring vacation, two days before the weekend training camp for Rakuzan, Seijuro found himself invited, again by Ryota, to a street basketball game with his former Teiko teammates. Early in the morning, he dressed appropriately in a comfortable jersey and shorts, and went to the public courts near Seirin. There, he discovered that a few more people had been added to their little group, all from the top basketball schools. Takao Kazunari from Shutoku, Himuro Tatsuya from Yosen, and Kagami Taiga from Seirin.  
   
Shintaro greeted him first, a large fluffy mammoth clutched in his arms, its thick dark hair standing out in contrast to Shintaro’s white shirt. His face was tense. “Akashi.”  
   
Seijuro entertained the thought that perhaps only Ryota truly wanted him here. Then dismissed it. It was only appropriate if that was so. Seijuro was an enemy to his former teammates, not a friend. How else would he ensure that they were challenged, that he remained within their sights –  
   
The line of thought was not helpful. And Shintaro was waiting for a reply.  
   
“Shintaro,” Seijuro nodded. He chose to say nothing about the mammoth. Shintaro’s teammate from Shutoku, standing a few feet away in jeans and a light jacket, had the strangest expression on his face every time he caught sight of Shintaro and the mammoth. As if he was deciding if he should laugh or choke. He mostly appeared to be opting for the latter.  
   
Shintaro scowled when he saw the direction of Seijuro’s curious gaze. He adjusted his glasses. “Takao has developed an unusual reaction to today’s lucky item. However, as he suffered bruised ribs from an accident with his bicycle and a car last week –” the scowl deepened, “ – I have made it clear that he should not laugh or he will further injure himself.”  
   
“He will not be playing,” Seijuro said.  
   
“He will not,” Shintaro confirmed, and shot a glare in Takao’s direction, as if to quell any possibly developing ideas that he would be picking up a basketball in the course of the afternoon. “Nonetheless, he insisted on coming to watch.”  
   
Takao appeared to take the glare as an invitation to come over. He draped an arm over Shintaro’s shoulders, grinned at Seijuro. “You should have seen Shin-chan’s face when he saw me. Kise invited me.”  
   
Shintaro’s face soured further.  
   
Seijuro said, expression bland, “It is nice that you have found love, Shintaro.”  
   
The two of them stared at him. A storm began building in Shintaro’s dark green eyes. And then Takao began laughing. Stopped at once, wincing at some pain in his ribs.  
   
Shintaro said, darkly, “Akashi –”  
   
Tetsuya made his presence known. His gaze was neutral as it moved between Shintaro and Seijuro. “Akashi-kun, Midorima-kun, we are ready to split into teams.”  
   
“Thank you, Tetsuya,” Seijuro said, perfectly gracious.  
   
They all gathered in a loose circle in the middle of the court. Seijuro found himself standing next to Atsushi and Himuro Tatsuya. Himuro gave him a long, hard look. Unable to discern a reason for such scrutiny, Seijuro noted the look and filed it away in the back of his mind.  
   
At any rate, Shuzo had arrived, the last to do so, and Seijuro was obliged to greet him.  
   
Shuzo’s response was pleasant but short. There was a distant tension in his expression, and in the way that he held himself, that had not been there when they said goodbye at the gates of Rakuzan only four days ago. An unpleasant feeling sparked at the back of Seijuro’s mind, tightened further when Himuro clapped a hand on Shuzo’s shoulder, squeezing once, before moving into the opposite team.  
   
Deliberate contact, where friendly contact was usually unplanned and casual; and reassuring and reaffirming in its intent, as if Shuzo needed an action of either nature.  
   
The match started, and Seijuro was forced to put his concern aside for the moment. It was, at any rate, unwarranted concern. Shuzo had made it clear several times over that, like Seijuro himself, he preferred to handle his own issues.  
   
As the afternoon progressed, they played three brief, intense games, changing teams each time. Seijuro found it enlightening to play on the same side as Tetsuya once again, and also with the other three from his former teammates’ new schools. Takao was quick, aware and intelligent; Kagami was powerful and aggressive; and Himuro had a beautiful precision to his movements that Seijuro would have dearly liked to train into his own players.  
   
When the sun began to set, people began to drop out to return home. Seijuro stayed. There were no events that he needed to attend tonight, his homework was finished, and his father cared little what he did with his own time. Eventually, only he, Ryota, Atsushi, Himuro, and Shuzo were left.  
   
At the end of a rapid three-on-two match conducted in the dim lighting filtering into the court from the street, Atsushi sat down on the ground. “I’m hungry,” he announced. “Muro-chin, sweets.”  
   
“You’re spoiled, kid. Get your own sweets,” Shuzo snapped, kicking him lightly in the shin. But he joined Atsushi on the ground. “I’m hungry and exhausted. And Sei’s got us all in for a training camp the day after tomorrow. Why do I do this to myself?”  
   
Ryota, seated on the lowest step of the bleachers to the rear of the court, sent their ex-captain the half-fearful look that had been going Shuzo’s way since the first time he had used the nickname during a game. “How do you do that, Nijimuracchi? I mean, I know that that Mibuchi guy calls Akashicchi Sei-chan – but he’s Akashicchi.”  
   
“You are aware that I am here, Ryota,” Seijuro said. He didn’t bother inserting anger into his voice. He was simply amused.  
   
“It’s kind of a bet,” Shuzo said, stretching his limbs out. Shadow spread out from the lines of his body, made him look softer, younger.  
   
Seijuro corrected him automatically. “It was not a bet. Shuzo chose to take offence at something childish.”  
   
“I’m the childish one, am I? You arrogant brat.”  
   
Himuro, sitting beside Ryota on the bleachers, stood up, draping his towel across his shoulders. “Well, this is sweet –” Shuzo shot him a sharp glare “ – but Atsushi and I should get going. We need to catch an early train back to Yosen tomorrow for our own training camp.”  
   
Ryota was quiet. And then he said, “Akashicchi, before you go, can I talk to you for a minute?”  
   
Seijuro allowed himself a blink of surprise. Outside of group-organised events, his former teammates from Teiko did not in general seek him out. Except for Shintaro, of course. Their shogi games were a mutually cherished activity. But Ryota’s gaze was solemn. Where his fingers were curled around the edges of the bleachers, Seijuro could see that the bone was white with tension.  
   
In the short pause after Ryota’s pronouncement, Shuzo had pushed himself back into a cross-legged sitting position on the ground. He said, tone indifferent, “Talk to him, Sei. I have something to say to you too. So I’ll wait here. Kise, you don’t need him for long, do you?”  
   
“I don’t,” Ryota said.  
   
“Goodnight, everyone,” Himuro said. “Shuu, call me when you’re done.”  
   
Shuzo waved a hand.  
   
“I mean it,” Hinuro said.  
   
“I’ll call you.”  
   
Atsushi’s dark gaze travelled questioningly from Ryota to Shuzo to Seijuro himself before its owner shrugged. “See you, Kise-chin, Aka-chin, Nijimura-senpai.”  
   
As the two of them left the court, Seijuro could hear Himuro complaining. “I don’t understand it. Why does Shuu get the honorific? I’m your senpai too, Atsushi!”  
   
“Muro-chin is Muro-chin,” Atsushi replied, unflappable.  
   
Shuzo got up and went to the high wire fencing on the far side of the court from the bleachers. He bounced the basketball he had brought with him on the hard floor. “You can get on with it,” he called. “I’ll be shooting hoops over here.”  
   
Seijuro folded his arms against the settling cold of the spring night, and looked down at Ryota. They were five feet apart. “You wished to speak to me.”  
   
“Ah, well,” Ryota looked awkward. There was a towel draped over his head; he pulled it off onto his lap. “It’s actually – about Nijimura-senpai.  
   
Unexpected. Seijuro smoothed out his expression. “Continue.”  
   
“Kaijo broke up a few days earlier for spring break this year, for reconstruction work on the main building. So – I was around here when Midorimacchi’s point guard got hit by the car. I saw it, actually.” He scratched a hand through his blond hair. “And I went with him to the hospital. I mean, Midorimacchi won’t say it, but Takao’s important to him.”  
   
Shintaro had not mentioned Ryota’s presence at the accident. Seijuro held himself still, and waited. Ryota was the kind of person who structured his narratives like stories that needed to be told. Seijuro need only be patient, and he would get there.  
   
“You know how we all met Nijimura-senpai’s mother when she came to his last basketball practice? Well, I saw her there. At the hospital. She was really – unhappy to see me. And she started saying all these things.”  
   
Seijuro stiffened. Several yards to their left, Shuzo let out a short curse when he failed to get a three-pointer into the basket.  
   
“They were really awful things. About how Nijimura-senpai was a horrible son, how he –” Ryota stumbled over the word, “ – killed his father because he hated her. And things like that. I don’t remember it all. One of the nurses rescued me.”  
   
“She said that Shuzo killed his father,” Seijuro repeated, blankly.  
   
Of the Generation of Miracles, Ryota was both the best and the worst at concealing his emotions. Ryota could mimic feelings, re-interpret them and make them his own; Seijuro imagined this was an advantage in his modelling career. But one of the things that made Ryota unique had always been the sense of sincerity and goodwill that he emanated to the people around him. And that sincerity made itself known always, just as Ryota’s basketball potential made itself known, in the genuine emotion, the genuine brilliance, that shone through the mimicry.  
   
And therefore, Seijuro could see the brief hurt in his former teammate’s face as he nodded and then said, in an irrelevant divergence from the topic at hand, “I blamed you for Teiko, Akashicchi. Your obsession with winning. It was your way of coping with us – but it probably made everything worse.”  
   
Seijuro’s temper sparked with impatience. He opened his mouth.   
   
Ryota barrelled over him. “But I’ve been re-thinking a lot of things, lately. Since Kasamatsu-senpai and the others left, and I was made captain. And I don’t – I don’t really think it was completely your fault. We all messed up. We were all kind of stupid. We made each other worse.”  
   
It had a confessional tone to it, this pronouncement. Seijuro disliked having his time wasted with moral or spiritual epiphanies. Particularly ones that he could do nothing about. Teiko was over. What did it matter to him, that Ryota and Shintaro and the others all seemed to think it desirable that those years should never have happened? As if their time together would always be made bitter by what came later.  
   
Shuzo scored a three-pointer, scooped the ball before it could hit the ground, and moved back to try another one.  
   
But this response was unfair, pointed out Seijuro’s mind in an echo of Reo’s admonishing tone, Chihiro’s dark sarcasm, and Shuzo’s curt indifference. It was unfair to expect anything different of his teammates. The Generation of Miracles had all reacted differently to their domination of their game. Seijuro had fixated, Shintaro had stepped back, Daiki had sunk into himself, Ryota had closed his eyes, Atsushi had become a bully, and Tetsuya had run away. A pathetic story.  
   
“You have a point, Ryota. Please get to it.” Seijuro said, calmly.  
   
Ryota’s golden eyes were bright in the darkness. Kaijo had been good for him, honed his talent into confidence. “I still respect you, Akashicchi. You’re my friend. And you always understood Nijimura-senpai the best. So I thought – Akashicchi will know what to do about this.”  
   
Seijuro’s emotions were more confused than they had been in a long time. He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”  
   
Ryota smiled, blindingly bright. He jumped up from the bleachers, caught Seijuro in a rapid, unexpected hug, and then bounded towards the open gate. “I’ll see you another time then, Akashicchi, Nijimura-senpai! And I’ll message you! We haven’t done that in ages –”  
   
Seijuro opened his mouth to forbid any such intentions – Ryota’s messaging habits left a lot to be desired. But his former teammate had already made his escape.  
   
Behind him, the sound of the basketball bouncing on the court stopped, and Shuzo’s amused voice came clear through the darkness. “Well, that was fast. He’s as energetic as I remember. As annoying, too.”  
   
Seijuro could remember a time when that energy had been transparent, cracked at the edges. One of Seijuro’s many failures as captain at Teiko. The turmoil in his feelings hardened at the memory, resolved into a small, tight ball of tension in the middle of his chest. He turned to look at his vice-captain.  
   
Shuzo had been spinning the basketball on the second finger of his right hand. On seeing Seijuro’s expression, he stopped the spinning, caught the ball in the palm of his hand. “You all right?”  
   
Seijuro breathed, slowly. Control was important.  
   
They were directly opposite from each other. Shuzo’s face was cast in half darkness by the light from the street. “What did Kise say to you?” he said, flat like a demand. “You look –”  
   
Seijuro ignored the presumption. “Ryota met your mother at a hospital last week.”  
   
Carelessly indifferent. “What did she say to him?”  
   
“She said that you killed your father.”  
   
Shuzo let out a long breath. Then turned towards the bleachers. He picked up the dark leather jacket that he had discarded when they began playing, and shrugged it over his shoulders. The basketball, he left on the floor. “Do you believe her?”  
   
“Of course not,” Seijuro said. “Your father was ill.”  
   
“He was. Doesn’t mean that I didn’t kill him.”  
   
The old anger was as black and ugly as ever. The anger of impotence. Seijuro made himself look away.  
   
“Hey,” Shuzo said. His tone softened. Seijuro heard his footsteps come nearer and then felt a hand on his shoulder. His former captain’s intuitive understanding of the moods of people around him. It calmed Seijuro at the same time as it irritated him.  
   
He stepped out of Shuzo’s grip. Met his gaze. “You are beginning to try my patience, Shuzo,” he bit out.  
   
Shuzo laughed. It was a harsh sound. “You really are you, aren’t you?”  
   
“A tautology,” Seijuro observed. He ensured that his tone was cutting.  
   
“An irrelevant observation,” Shuzo said, equally sharp.  
   
There was a long, taut, pause.  
   
The tension, Seijuro decided at last, was untenable. Rakuzan’s training camp was in little over a day. The captain and vice-captain needed to be on good working terms in order for events to go smoothly. His pride aside, it would be better to withdraw now before he and Shuzo could devolve into an actual quarrel.  
   
Shuzo had always been able to read his thinking. Most of the time, even when he did not understand it, he agreed with Seijuro. This time, he did not. “Hell, no,” he snapped, before Seijuro could move to leave the premises, “We’re solving this now.”  
   
“As captain –” Seijuro began.  
   
“We’re quarrelling, Akashi,” Shuzo said. The first time in weeks that he had used Seijuro’s family name. “We’re not about to quarrel. And, anyway, I hate it when you do this. Pretend that things – like tension, and disagreements, and shit – can all be neatly packed away into little compartments, to be dealt with at your convenience. It doesn’t work like that.”  
   
The street beside the court was quiet at this time in the evening. Shuzo’s voice, though low, was clear.  
   
“I see,” Seijuro said. “How interesting of you to say that, Shuzo. When you appear to be doing the same thing.”  
   
“What,” Shuzo said, dangerously.  
   
“You must be aware of what I mean. Choosing deliberate ignorance of what happened in Teiko after your departure. I understand, of course – you have more current issues to resolve. It only makes sense to compartmentalise.”  
   
 Shuzo had a habit of smiling when he was extremely angry. “Are you done?”  
   
“No. I think that there is a difference between us.”  
   
“And what is that?”  
   
Decisively. “I compartmentalise from necessity. Effectiveness. You – yours is from cowardice. A surprising development. Compared to us, the Generation of Miracles, you were talentless. But I never thought you a coward. Nijimura-san.”  
   
There was a breathless silence.  
   
Shuzo was no longer smiling. His expression was cold. “Fuck you.”  
   
Victory, Seijuro had found in his last year of middle school, could taste like dust. He stood his ground.  
   
His vice-captain’s fingers were white-knuckled around the basketball in his hands. Seijuro had a sudden, irrelevant memory of those fingers on his face, in his hair, just a few days ago. The memory made the blood under his skin feel both warm and cool. The edge between gain and loss.  
   
His mind, though, felt blank. Clear as a winter sky.  
   
Shuzo said, “See you on Saturday, Akashi.” And then he walked around Seijuro towards the gate.  
   
It occurred to Seijuro, long after he had gone, that Shuzo had had something to say to him. After Ryota. That he had not said it. But it was too late now to ask.  
   
   
   
When Kou came home, around midnight, he found his older brother waiting on the front step, tossing a basketball from hand to hand. It was a cold night, but Nii-chan was wearing only a thin blue T-shirt and shorts. His hair was wet, as if he had just taken a shower. At Kou’s approach, he looked up.  
   
Kou hated Nii-chan’s gaze when he was angry. His clear grey eyes, inherited from their father’s side of the family, swept up and down Kou’s black gakuran and the school bag still slung over his shoulder. They narrowed, piercing. And then Nii-chan set the basketball down between his feet and stood up. “You didn’t answer your phone. I called you six times.”  
   
Kou set his expression. Refused to answer.  
   
“It’s Thursday, Kou. It’s a school night. Even if it was a Friday – is this what you’ve been up to since I left for Rakuzan?”  
   
Kou hated this about his brother too. His arrogance. His interfering sense of guilt. “What I do has got nothing to do with you,” he snapped.  
   
“Really,” Nii-chan said. He wasn’t losing his temper. This discomfited Kou. Usually, Kou had to go a lot farther to trigger this side of Nii-chan. The cold anger. He looked into his brother’s face. There was the unhappiness, of course. Buried in the flat line of Nii-chan’s mouth, and in the tired way he held himself. But that was no different from how Nii-chan always looked when he was at home. Because of Kaa-san.  
   
Kou’s ribs tightened. “Really.”  
   
“Kaa-san told me that you’ve gone to Kyoto at least once more since I last saw you. Skipped school again to do it too. Are you still hanging out with Yamada?”  
   
Kou was not. Despite what he had told his brother about the scissors thing having been an accident, he had known that that was a lie. Kou had met Yamada-san at a street band performance three months ago; Yamada-san had proven his ticket to several more performances by similar bands; but Yamada-san was unstable. The way he was so often in Tokyo – and not just for band performances, Kou suspected, but for other, darker things – and the way he obsessed about Akashi Seijuro to anyone who had no option but to listen to his crap; it was disturbing. Kou had cut ties the moment the instability manifested in a physical attack.  
   
But, as always, Nii-chan made Kou want to lie. He said, “I am. So what?”  
   
Nii-chan was quiet for a long moment. The wind around them picked up, blew into Kou’s face. Nii-chan slipped his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “It’s not really my place to tell you this. But, Kou, that bastard is not a good person. He hurt –” a pause, “ – someone important to me. My kouhai. You met him on the train.”  
   
Kou felt something ugly crawl up his throat and die there. The look on Nii-chan’s face hurt. That cold, distant, hurting expression. Nii-chan had worn it the day that the doctors said that their father wouldn’t wake up from his coma. Not this time. Only thirty-six hours later, Nii-chan had made his decision. And even though Kou hadn’t been there for that – he had refused to be – he could imagine his brother’s expression as their father’s life-support was cut. It would have been the same.  
   
Because Nii-chan was always determined to be alone.  
   
“Akashi-san’s fine,” Kou bit out. As if his brother needed something else to feel responsible for. As if Kou wanted to care. “I don’t know what Yamada-san did to him –” All at once, the twisted obsessiveness with which the older boy had talked about Akashi Seijuro, about beating up his pretty face, about watching the light go out of his creepy fucked-up eyes, about screwing him like a bitch – it flashed across Kou’s mind and almost made him shut his mouth before he could hang himself. But Kou had gotten rid of his brain-to-mouth filter when it came to his brother a long time ago. “But I bet that he deserved –”  
   
“Kou,” Nii-chan snapped.  
   
The single word, his name, was enough to make Kou’s blood freeze. The anger in it. But, even as he bit his tongue, he smiled. Because Nii-chan’s expression had changed. His tone was different.  
   
Nii-chan was always least pathetic when he had someone to care about.  
   
“Please tell me,” Nii-chan said, voice even, “that you’re saying that – that you even started to say that – because you don’t know what Yamada did.”  
   
“I don’t know,” Kou shrugged.  
   
“You seemed to have an idea, on the train.”  
   
“Yamada-san said that Akashi-san was a whiny bitch uke. But he’s not.”  
   
Nii-chan took a breath, and then surged forward to grab Kou by the collar. His fingers were tight. Kou instinctively clawed at his brother’s wrist. “Let me go!”  
   
“I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap, you brat!”  
   
“I said that he’s not,” Kou hissed.  
   
Their faces were less than an inch apart. Nii-chan’s gaze was deep with disgust. “And if he was, then he would deserve it.”  
   
Nii-chan made him want to lie. But Kou would hate himself if he lied about this. So he averted his gaze. “No. Obviously.”  
   
His brother released him. “Good.”  
   
Kou’s temper flared. “You’re not my father.”  
   
“I’m not trying to be.” Nii-chan stepped back to the front step, leaned down to pick up his basketball. “I’m your brother. Maybe you should get that into your thick head. Kaa-san’s waiting up for you. Go inside and apologize. Then get to bed.” He moved past Kou, heading for the gate.  
   
“You know,” Kou said, nastily, as his brother’s hand came down on the black steel latch. It gleamed darkly in the light of the moon above their heads. “No matter how much you help Kaa-san, she’s not going to forgive you.”  
   
His brother slammed the gate open. It banged off the cement pillar to which its hinges were attached.  
   
Nii-chan said, without looking back, “I’m not a fucking saint. You’re the second person to piss me off tonight, Kou. So shut up before I punch you in the face. You skip school to run off fuck-knows-where, hang out with jerks who drug and beat up fifteen-year-olds, and say every horrible thing that you can think of.” In the quiet around them, Kou could hear his brother’s breathing. Rapid. “You have no right to judge me.”  
   
There was the sound of a door opening inside the house. Closing. Their mother, Kou supposed, feeling dread creep up his spine.  
   
A shadow crossed Nii-chan’s face. He left.  
   
   
   
Training during the weekend camp was less than strenuous. Towards the end of the afternoon practice session on the first day, Chihiro sat down on the floor of the gym to start his cooling-down exercises. He was sweating only a little, the exercise enough to wake up all the muscles in his body and the adrenaline in his blood, but not enough to exhaust him. A few minutes later, Hayama dropped down a few feet away, sprawling dramatically after having finished his final set of three-pointers.  
   
Nearby, Mibuchi was already done with his cooling-down exercises. He was standing, a bottle in hand, looking across to the far end of the gym, where Akashi and Nijimura were engaged in a quiet conversation.  
   
Hayama followed the gaze. Said, without bothering to lower his voice, “Hey, notice anything off about them today?”  
   
Mibuchi said, “They are – unusually tense.”  
   
Cautious words. Chihiro stretched his arms out above his head, pressing the fingers to the floor in front of him. He felt his muscles contract, loosen. As he came up again, he said, flatly, “You mean they’re acting like they killed each other’s grandmothers. And have no evidence. So they have to be fucking polite about it all.”  
   
Mibuchi unscrewed the cap of his water bottle. What Chihiro could see of his expression was unsettled. “Sei-chan doesn’t usually let things get to him.”  
   
Hayama said, “Nijimura doesn’t, either. I mean, he gets mad. But when he does, it’s kind of like –” he stopped in the middle of a sit-up to bring his arms up in a wide circular gesture that ended in a flapping of his fingers, “ – Flare. Boom. Then poof.”  
   
Chihiro said nothing, already bored of the topic. Akashi and Nijimura were Akashi and Nijimura. They were characterised by their inexplicable ability to tolerate each other. Whatever was wrong between them – disagreement, lover’s tiff, friendly quarrel – would probably blow over by the evening.  
   
And, anyway, Chihiro had decided after the Spring Tournament, and the almost-disgusting heart-to-heart he had had with Akashi on the train, that he was going to flat-out ignore what Akashi did unless it was impossible. The psycho captain’s hot-cold routine was screwing up Chihiro’s priorities beyond recognition.  
   
Nebuya finished his own training schedule and loped over to join them. Sat his giant bulk beside Hayama.  
   
Hayama said, “You know anything, Ei-chan?”  
   
Nebuya eyed him as he seized a water bottle from the collection of bottles on the floor beside them and started to glug down enormous amounts of fluid. “What about?”  
   
Mibuchi said, “We shouldn’t really talk about this, Kotaro, Eikichi.”  
   
“They can’t hear us!” Hayama complained.  
   
Across the gym, Akashi finished his conversation with Nijimura and turned to leave through the double doors on the east side. Nijimura started walking in their direction. His demeanour, as was usual during practice, was coolly professional. But there was a cutting edge to his gaze that made Hayama wince and say, “Maybe not?”  
   
Nijimura came to a stop in front of them. Sweat dripped down his neck and arms. He said, “Wash up and get changed. The coaches have got a campfire dinner planned. And then we’ll be pairing up for a Test of Courage. Come late, or skip out on either activity, and you’ll run laps until you drop. Or I’ll beat you up.” Instructions delivered, he turned sharply and went back across the hall. Started directing the few third-stringers who had come with them in clean-up.  
   
Mibuchi screwed the cap of his water bottle back on. He hadn’t taken a drink.  
   
Hayama said, feelingly, “I hope I’m not paired up with either of them.”  
   
“Please be quiet, Kotaro,” Mibuchi said.  
   
Chihiro’s nerves were getting more strung up by the minute. He cut his cooling-down exercises and stood up. “I’m going to shower.”  
   
He found Akashi in their room, already showered and changed. His red hair was dripping water onto a shogi board set up on the floor beside his bed. Shintaro the tortoise was sitting calmly next to the board, munching on a piece of lettuce.  
   
“You brought the tortoise,” Chihiro said, flatly.  
   
“Chihiro,” Akashi said, tone calm as it had been since they met up at Rakuzan in the morning. He and Nijimura had sat on opposite sides of the coach that had been hired to take them to this little place tucked away in the mountains. The memory made Chihiro itch. The screwed-up tension that had been everywhere all day. “You returned more quickly than expected.”  
   
Chihiro reminded himself, forcefully, that he didn’t care. Akashi could handle himself. And Chihiro didn’t care. He went to his bed, snatched up the towel that the hotel staff had left in a basket on top of the sheets. He added a change of clothes, soap, and shampoo to the basket, and made for the door.  
   
There was a crash. Shogi pieces went flying.  
   
Akashi said, “Shintaro. Please refrain from charging the board. It was a birthday gift from Shintaro. Damage will be difficult to explain.”  
   
Chihiro’s resolve gave out. He braced a hand against the doorframe and turned to look at Akashi. “You know, this would be pathetic if it wasn’t so fucking sad.”  
   
Silence. A shogi piece halted mid-roll and fell flat. The sound, on the polished wooden floor, was clear as a bell.  
   
Akashi’s tone was the kind of tone that made people kneel. Or run. “Would you like to elaborate, Chihiro?”  
   
A question. Akashi didn’t ask questions. Chihiro’s nerves, already frayed, attempted to further crack under the presure.  
   
But Chihiro had seen this person on the floor. He had seen Akashi Seijuro, eyes glazed over as if drunk, unable to move as larger, taller bastards with masks over their faces drove their fists into his crumpled body. And Chihiro had kicked their asses for that. And watched Akashi wake up in the hospital, get up and go to school and to basketball practice, and act as absolute as he had always been. That ruthlessness was a part of Akashi, manifested itself a hundredfold when Akashi was cornered or vulnerable. Things that Chihiro had never asked to know.  
   
He felt his fingers curl around the doorframe. Tight enough that the muscles in his hand hurt. “You didn’t shake hands with Midorima or Kise at the Winter Cup, or Kuroko at the Spring Tournament, because you want to be their enemy, not their friend. But you miss them enough to name pet animals after them. When they think to invite you, you go to their group dinners and friendly games. And when you screw up with your precious ex-captain, you feel bad enough that you bring the tortoise on a training camp.”  
   
“You presume –” Akashi began, almost gently.  
   
Chihiro pushed on; if he didn’t, he thought that he might combust from the force of Akashi’s temper alone. And this needed to be said. It had to be said. “You know it, don’t you? You can’t win with your friends. So you act like a fucking coward and run away from dealing with them at all.”  
   
Akashi stood up. It was a swift, fluid motion. Chihiro’s gaze was yanked up from the shogi pieces scattered across the floor to Akashi’s face by an instinctive, magnetic sense of fear.  
   
Shintaro the tortoise nibbled on the edge of the shogi board.  
   
Akashi said, “You are the second person in three days to accuse me of that. Although much more directly.” The softness of the tone in which the words were spoken suggested that that distinction was not one that Chihiro should have aspired to. “Tell me then. If you were in my situation. My friends, as you say, consider their time with me as their captain to be singularly the worst two years of their lives. My ex-captain refuses to tell me anything of his problems. Tell me what you would do.”  
   
“You’re asking me to help you.”  
   
The day after the assault, Akashi had come to Chihiro’s hospital room. There were bandages wrapped around his head, his arms and hands, and his red-gold eyes had been dull and cold. He had looked at Chihiro’s broken foot, set in a thick plaster cast, and nodded, once, twice, as if it were information that needed to be processed. And he had said, “Thank you.” And afterwards, he had said. “I will deal with Yamada Isamu. You will rest. When you are recovered, we will win the Winter Cup.”  
   
It would have been that much more convincing. If Akashi had not been bandaged within an inch of his life. If he had not, in the quiet of the hospital room, looked less like the indomitable first-year captain of Rakuzan, and more like a fifteen-year-old with nothing special to him other than that heterochromatic gaze.  
   
Now-Akashi’s lips thinned.  
   
Chihiro smiled. Knew that it looked twisted. “It’s easy, captain. Don’t try to win.”  
   
“Tetsuya’s advice,” Akashi observed.  
   
“Fuck, no,” Chihiro bit out, his bad temper returning. He had never liked Kuroko Tetsuya. The player he had been meant to replace. “You know what, figure out the rest yourself. You’re supposed to be the genius.”  
   
Shintaro the tortoise had progressed from nibbling on the board to crawling slowly across the floor. It navigated the shogi pieces and Chihiro’s feet to get into the corridor outside.  
   
Akashi blinked, dropped his sharp-edged attention from Chihiro to follow the tortoise’s movements.  
   
Chihiro’s brain stopped between catching the animal and rebelling at catching the animal. It was Akashi’s screwed-up pet.  
   
Shintaro the tortoise wandered into Nijimura Shuzo’s open hands.  
   
Nijimura straightened. Flicked his gaze between Chihiro and the open door. Like Akashi, he was dressed and showered. Even though he had probably left the gym at least ten minutes after Chihiro.  
   
“Mayuzumi,” Nijimura said. “It’s damn irresponsible to leave before you finish cooling down. Get to the showers.”  
   
“Shuzo,” Akashi said. He had come to the door as Nijimura spoke. On instinct, Chihiro moved out into the corridor, out of the bastard’s way. The automatic response to Akashi Seijuro. It made Chihiro’s teeth grit.  
   
He said, blandly, “I’ll leave you two to talk then. Let us all know when you resolve your lovers’ tiff. It’s been irritating as hell.”  
   
Nijimura didn’t even look at him. “We’ll make a bloody banner. Scram.”  
   
   
   
The most annoying thing about his epiphany the week before, Shuzo decided, was that he had started noticing how attractive he found Akashi. The soft brilliance of his eyes and hair. The smooth strength in his limbs when he moved. The cadence of his voice. Shuzo’s last sexual interaction with anything or anyone other than his hand had been with Tatsuya, over a year ago. It made it difficult, in the initial moment of his seeing Sei framed in the doorway, red hair wet and face composed, to concentrate.  
   
Mayuzumi left, and Shuzo hefted the tortoise a bit higher into the air. A peace offering. Shintaro the tortoise scrabbled its little claws on Shuzo’s skin. He winced.  
   
Sei said, “Shintaro dislikes heights.”  
   
“Oh. Sorry about that.” Shuzo considered the open doorway, and then, shrugging, closed the distance between himself and Sei before setting the tortoise down on the floor of the room. He took in the shogi pieces scattered across the floor with a glance. The board was sitting, a little crooked in its orientation, in the middle of the mess. There was a crumbled lettuce leaf next to it. “Tornado?”  
   
“Shintaro,” Sei said, simply. He stepped back away from the door, opening up space for Shuzo to enter. “Please come in.”  
   
The moment the door was closed behind him, Shuzo said, straight off, because they needed to be on the same page if this was going to work. “I heard what you said to Mayuzumi. About Teiko. And about me.”  
   
Rakuzan’s captain let nothing faze him. Shuzo watched him sit down on the edge of his bed. Even looking up at Shuzo, dressed in nothing more than a Rakuzan jacket over shirt and shorts, he gave off an air of supreme confidence. Absolute rule. “I suppose you have something to say. Please make your point.”  
   
The implication: Akashi had better things to be doing.  
   
Amusement and anger warred in Shuzo’s blood. He forced himself to calm. Pulled out the high-backed armchair at the side of the room, and angled it so that he could sit facing his friend. He made himself comfortable.  
   
Shintaro the tortoise had found the crumbled lettuce leaf and was nibbling on it.  
   
Shuzo said, “Nothing I say about Teiko will change your mind. So what I have to say on it is only this: you went overboard, Sei. I still don’t know all the details what happened, but it’s obvious. Winning a game 111-11? Only you would think of that. And it wasn’t just vicious, it was stupid. What kind of idiot would want to make that kind of point?”  
   
Akashi’s expression had shifted from neutral to bland. “I am aware –” he began. There was an edge in his voice.  
   
Shuzo interrupted. Because, the thing about Akashi, if you wanted to tell him something he disagreed with, you didn’t let him disagree until you were done. “My point. You went overboard. You were vicious. You were stupid. And you weren’t the only one who screwed up. You don’t know that the others feel the way you think they do. Not about those entire two years. Talk to them about it. There, that’s all I have to say on the subject.”  
   
“Many people are giving me advice today.” Sharp.  
   
One thing done. Now the second thing. Shuzo had set himself this task. After talking to Tatsuya, and then afterwards talking to Kou. He was done running. He would go through with it.  
   
“I was going to tell you something on Thursday,” he said. Watched Sei’s fingers curl into the blankets on his bed. Surprise. “And don’t think this means I’ve forgiven you for what you said to me, because you were a fucking jerk, Akashi, but –” The breath in his lungs hurt, his blood beat a rhythm between calm and fear, and this would change things, of course it would change things. Still, Shuzo forced the words from his mouth. “ – I like you.”  
   
Quiet. It was getting dark outside the window. Someone would come and get them for the campfire dinner soon. Shuzo could hear his pulse drumming in his ears. The armchair was uncomfortable, with its high back and arms. Confining. It was more the kind of thing Akashi would sit on. A throne. Shuzo probably just looked like an idiot on the thing. Why had he thought this was a bloody good idea?  
   
“As a lover,” Sei said. It was flat. He had brought his hands up and intertwined them. His gaze was directed at his fingers rather than at Shuzo.  
   
Shuzo suppressed a wince. Only Sei. Who the hell used that kind of wording? He said, unconsciously biting, “I like like you, if that’s what you’re trying to get at.”  
   
It was definitely dark outside, now.  
   
A cold breeze filtered in through the window, swept over the back of Shuzo’s neck. It raised goosebumps, and he remembered that in the minutes following his half-calm, half-agitated final decision to find Akashi and tell him before the campfire, he had forgotten to bring a jacket.  
   
He was going to freeze to death before he did any team bonding tonight.  
   
Sei had said nothing more for nearly four minutes.  
   
Tatsuya had warned him that this might be humiliating. Tatsuya had confessed before, and been rejected. He knew what it was like.  
   
Still, Shuzo hadn’t expected it to sting this much. And not only sting. Something felt twisted inside him, cold and hot at the same time, and he could feel a burn spreading under his skin. Akashi wasn’t even looking at him.  
   
He dug his fingers deep, once, into the velvety material of the armchair, and then stood up. “It’s fine if you don’t. Return the feelings.” Fuck, it sounded awkward. “I won’t let it affect anything about how we work together. So.”  
   
No movement. What, Shuzo thought with a vicious embarassment and creeping hurt, could Akashi possibly be finding so fascinating about his own hands?  
   
Shintaro the tortoise had interpreted Shuzo’s green and white sneakers as more lettuce. Carefully, Shuzo picked it up and set it down a few inches away from him, and crossed the room to the door. His muscles were moving automatically. As he put his hand on the handle, he laughed, and it sounded strained in the silence. The urge to say one more thing. “I said I was still mad at you about Thursday, but that’s not really true. So. I’ll go and make that banner Mayuzumi wanted. I guess we’ll –”  
   
“You wanted to know what, exactly, happened between Yamada Isamu and myself,” Sei said. Calm, even.  
   
Shuzo’s hand tightened on the door handle. “What.”  
   
“I am surprised at you, Shuzo.” The name dropped like acid from Akashi’s mouth. Crawled under Shuzo’s skin. “To think that you would have gone to someone else for the full account. The ugly details. But your cowardice seems to have grown by leaps and bounds. It only makes sense that your interfering, arrogant, and unnecessary sense of guilt would have as well.”  
   
Humiliation deepened, fused with anger and confusion. If Akashi intended to reject him, he could have done it another way.  
   
But two could play at this game.  
   
Shuzo could hear the coldness in his own voice. The disdain. “What do you mean?”  
   
“Perhaps you think that this is an effective revenge. I assure you; it is only petty, spiteful retaliation. Disappointing, I admit. But, in the end, neither you nor Isamu are in possession of as much importance to me, or to Rakuzan, as you seem to think. Your insults are insignificant. What is more, they are childish. To believe –”  
   
The words weren’t registering. Sei was speaking, and Shuzo couldn’t hear him. Just watch his mouth move, as if through a film of water.  
   
He raised his hand from the doorknob.  
   
Akashi’s gaze narrowed, incandescent.  
   
Shuzo remembered, dropped his arm down to his side. No, he couldn’t hit Sei. Reason told him that with cool clarity. Hitting Sei would accomplish nothing. Only confirm whatever twisted –  
   
He said, “Akashi Seijuro, I’m going to say this once. So shut up.”  
   
Keeping his temper was something Shuzo had had to learn to do, after he started basketball, after he began loving it enough to realize that delinquency would only get in the way of getting into a top school for the sport. Therefore, he had learned to keep his temper from practicality. And a lot of people had assumed that his calm, his steadiness when it was important – it meant that he was mature for his age.  
   
Shuzo knew that for a lie. He hadn’t learned maturity until his father became ill. Until his parents divorced, because illness could drive people apart as well or better than it could bring them together. Until the revelation in Shuzo’s father’s living will that it was Shuzo, and not his mother or his siblings or his aunt and uncle, who had been given lasting power of attorney. Shuzo who against all reason got to decide if his father should live or die.  
   
He had thought he was done growing up. Felt that distance between himself and his new teammates at Rakuzan. Not with Tatsuya, of course, who had seen things on the streets that Shuzo would probably never understand. But Shuzo had found it difficult to familiarise himself with Mayuzumi, and Nebuya, and Mibuchi. Even Akashi.  
   
Bloody arrogance, that had been. Not arrogance that Shuzo had held consciously, to be fair. But stupid and childish despite that. And of course it would be Akashi fucking Seijuro who made him realize it.  
   
Sei was waiting, face a frozen mask of disdain. Shuzo could read the dismissal in his red-gold eyes, at last directed at him and not at whatever puzzle there was located in his intertwined fingers.  
   
“I like you. I don’t know what bullshit conspiracy you’re reading into that. But I’m telling the truth. And for the record, I didn't ask anyone about what Yamada did to you. That’s up to you to tell me.”  
   
Contempt. “You expect me to believe –”  
   
“And you know what. Just to prove that, I’ll tell you what you want to know. That’ll give you the upper hand, won’t it? That’ll make you feel bloody secure enough to actually think about what I’m saying, instead of seeing a threat to your godly authority in everything, you –” he choked, briefly, “ – paranoid bastard.”  
   
Shuzo realized that he had lied to himself. Again. He hadn’t learnt to keep his temper. Or at least it was a lesson he had dropped halfway through. The fury cracking in every nerve – the feeling was one that he could recognise with intimate familiarity. He turned fully to face Akashi. As he did, his right foot set down on an upright shogi piece. There was a moment of breathlessness, when Shuzo thought he would land on his butt – and that would be tension-breaking, wouldn’t it – but he had enough presence of mind to still his body before the momentum could topple him. The shogi piece clattered flat. Shuzo kept his balance.  
   
He said, put enough force into his voice that Sei pressed his lips together and did not try to speak. “Two months after I got to the States, my parents divorced. My mother decided to stay in America, because we kids wanted to be with my father. So we stayed. And went to school and all that shit.”  
   
It was strange, how cathartic this was. Like something thick and heavy removing itself from deep in his gut, where it had gotten so badly entangled that Shuzo had stopped realizing that it was there. “And then, about a year back, my father went into a deep coma. A final coma, the doctors said. And my father’s will left power of attorney to me.”  
   
There was something dark in Sei’s face. Shuzo didn’t let himself pause to read it. He didn’t want to know what his kouhai was thinking.  
   
“So I – ” the word caught. “I –” Why the fuck couldn’t he say it? He had already started. He might as well finish.  
   
His throat felt thick. His earlier fury turned, sharp, on himself. The cowardice of it.  
   
There was a hand on his arm. Shuzo followed the slender fingers up to their owner’s face. He hadn’t seen Sei move. When had it happened? When had he –  
   
To his desperate humiliation, he realized that there were tears in his eyes. Akashi’s, of course, inevitably, were strong and clear.  
   
“Let me go.” That came out well enough. Shuzo tightened the muscles in his arm, made to pull away.  
   
Akashi’s grip was strong. Unyielding. As expected of the captain of Rakuzan’s basketball team. “Shuzo.”  
   
The bile had gone from his tone.  
   
Shuzo scrubbed his free hand over his face, rubbing the tears away. He said, again, perfectly calm, “Seijuro. Let go of me.”  
   
“I –” the word sounded like it had to be bitten off, “ – apologize. Deeply. What I said was out of line. You are yourself, not Yamada Isamu.”  
   
From the humiliation came irritation. A better emotion. Shuzo seized it. “You think I don’t know that? I met the guy. He’s a freaking psycho.”  
   
Sei released him. The loss of that firm grip was both a relief and an ache. After this, Shuzo doubted that Akashi would ever touch him again.  
   
There was the sound of loud, deliberately loud, footsteps in the corridor outside. Hayama’s voice came, more solemn than Shuzo had heard it before, but determinedly normal. “Hey, Akashi, Nijimura. You’re going to be late for dinner. I thought you said we were going to have run laps if we were late. Well – ”  
   
Fully back in himself, Shuzo glanced at the clock above the beds in the room. Damn.  
   
Sei reached past him for the doorknob. Instinctively, Shuzo held his ground.  
   
“Reo-nee,” Hayama was whining outside the door. “Stop glaring at me like that. It’s not fair if we have to run laps and they don’t.”  
   
How much of an audience had they had? He struggled not to panic.  
   
“Shuzo.”  
   
He looked back at Sei, found about an inch of space between them. Fuck.  
   
But Sei, who had to be aware of Shuzo’s intrusion into his personal space, was ignoring it. The brat’s tone was as commanding as it always was. “As I said before, I apologize. It was senseless of me to compare you to Isamu. Disrespectful, both of your personality and my judgement. “  
   
“Your judgement,” Shuzo repeated. Again, that conflict in his emotions. Akashi Seijuro made Shuzo want to kill him as much as kiss him.  
   
“We will speak further on this matter.” No room for argument. “After we have both dispensed with the night’s obligations.”  
   
Mayuzumi, now. His footsteps were quiet, but Shuzo always recognised his presence for the restlessness that it exuded. Mayuzumi’s dissatisfaction with the world in general, and his teammates in particular. “If they’ve killed each other, we might as well go and get some food.”  
   
“Chihiro.” Mibuchi, disapproving.  
   
Sei opened the door, stepped outside.  
   
There was a brief silence. Shuzo could imagine the slow gaze that Rakuzan’s captain was turning on each of his teammates. “Kotaro, Reo, Chihiro. I see that the only one missing is Eikichi.”  
   
“We didn’t invite him,” Mayuzumi drawled.  
   
“We’re sorry, Sei-chan,” Mibuchi said, on top of him. “We really just came to get you for dinner.”  
   
Shuzo sucked in a breath, let it out through his teeth. And followed Akashi out into the corridor.  
   
   
   
Seijuro disliked errors of judgement. He particularly disliked it when those errors were his own. He had reacted to Shuzo’s confession without thinking. Instinctively. As if he were little more than a child who was scared of the dark.  
   
Reo had always had a disturbing affinity for Seijuro’s mood. As the others settled down to eat the barbequed meat that the hotel’s staff had prepared for them on grills by the roaring campfire, Reo slid easily into his space.  
   
Seijuro, concentrated on eating his own food on a rock located a few yards away from the others, narrowed his eyes at his teammate. “I am not in the mood for conversation. Nor are you fully forgiven for eavesdropping, Reo.”  
   
Reo set his plate down on the ground next to Seijuro’s chosen rock. Took up a cross-legged position. He smiled. “Sei-chan’s too kind not to have forgiven me.”  
   
“You will not speak to Shuzo of what you heard.”  
   
“Of course not,” Reo said, easily.  
   
Seijuro nodded, recommenced eating. The flames of the campfire flickered in the background, hissing and crackling. Kotaro and Eikichi’s voices rose above the sound, playing some sort of betting game. Chihiro was attempting to balance reading a light novel and eating at the same time, despite the lack of light and space.  
   
Shuzo had finished eating before anyone else, and was now crouched in front of the campfire, toasting a stick of marshmallows. His face, illuminated by the firelight, was calm and steady. His posture was relaxed.  
   
Reo said, “You really care about him. Shuzo-kun.”  
   
“He is a valuable player and vice-captain,” Seijuro returned.   
   
“He’s good for you.”  
   
Today was proving to be extremely trying. Seijuro set down his knife and fork. Said, pleasantly, “If you, too, have something to say about my conduct and my personality, Reo, please get to the point immediately.”  
   
Reo smiled again. A gentle look. Of all of his teammates, Seijuro had felt the most comfortable with him in the first weeks of his tenure as captain in Rakuzan. Reo accepted him, with a smoothness and an ease that Kotaro and Eikichi had taken a little while longer to acquire. Reo did not judge him.  
   
“You know I don’t have anything particular in mind to say, Sei-chan.”  
   
Seijuro quashed another bout of irritation at himself. He was on edge tonight. Chihiro, and then Shuzo. Without another word, he sliced a piece of barbequed meat and forked it.  
   
Reo understood the cue. He resumed his own eating, and for a moment, there was quiet, broken only by Eikichi’s loud laughter at something that Kotaro had failed to do on the other side of the campfire.  
   
Reo said, “You worry me.”  
   
A simple, direct statement. Seijuro blinked at him.  
   
Reo’s gaze was careful, but firm. The firelight caught on the red stripes across the left sleeve and collar of his white shirt. Seijuro recognised the shirt. It had been a gift from Reo’s sister on his birthday, and his teammate often wore it on group occasions.  
   
“You always have this pressure about you, Sei-chan. You know you have to win, and you do. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I can understand, sometimes, why that Seirin phantom player wanted to make us lose. Even if it was ineffective. From the moment I met you –” a pause, as if Reo was searching for the right words, “ – you seemed so unhappy.”  
   
“I am who I am,” Seijuro said, flatly. “I do not think about winning. I win because it is the inevitable outcome. Whether it comes after an unexpected defeat, it does not matter. In the end, I will win. What Tetsuya does not understand is this – his method is itself an oxymoron. He chooses to demonstrate the correctness of his style of basketball by achieving victory over me. A zero-sum game. To prove myself correct, I need only win against him the second time we meet.”  
   
Kotaro had joined Shuzo by the fire. A brief, half-disinterested – on Shuzo’s part – quarrel over how to toast marshmallows ensued. Eikichi plucked both Kotaro’s and Shuzo’s sticks from their outstretched hands and proceeded to consume them.  
   
Kotaro’s whine was predictable. “Eikichi! That’s unfair!”  
   
Shuzo’s reaction was less predictable. Given the distant attitude he had been maintaining since leaving Seijuro’s room, Seijuro expected his vice-captain to walk away from the quarrel. But it seemed that Shuzo’s temper, mercurial as ever, had opted for disobedience to the needs of practicality.  
   
“Are you Snorlax?” Shuzo demanded, snatching a rock up from the ground by the campfire. “That took a while to toast, you brat.”  
   
“Ah, Nijimura, that’s dangerous,” Kotaro yelped.  
   
Shuzo scowled, and dropped the rock.  
   
Seijuro’s irritation, at himself and at Reo, dissipate slightly.  
   
Reo had finished his meat and started in on his potatoes, eating as neatly and as methodically as he always did. “And what about your friend’s message? Do you find basketball fun, Sei-chan?”  
   
Seijuro considered this. Carefully, he laid his fork and knife side by side on his empty plate. A question that Ryota and Tetsuya had both asked him, in the finals of the Winter Cup and, later, the Spring Tournament. He had not answered them, at the time. Considered it unnecessary.  
   
At last, he said, “Two days ago, I told Shuzo that compared to the Generation of Miracles, he was talentless.”  
   
A moment. Reo said nothing.  
   
“It is a fact,” Seijuro continued. Shuzo had admitted as much, when he handed the captaincy over to Seijuro, then still a first-year. “Of course, there are people who compare to us in skill. The Uncrowned Kings. Himuro Tatsuya. You have not opposed Shuzo on the court before, Reo, although Chihiro has. But if you did, you would understand that he, too, could be one of us. Nonetheless, there is hard work. And there is talent. Ryota, Daiki, Atsushi, Shintaro, Tetsuya, and I. We make miracles happen on the court. It is that which gives us our title.”  
   
At the campfire, Shuzo had stepped back again, into his customary distance. Kotaro and Eikichi were racing each other in a contest to see who could toast the most marshmallows in the shortest amount of time. Chihiro had disappeared somewhere. Seijuro felt a spark of worry before dismissing it. Chihiro’s curiosity was a hazard at times, but he was capable of taking care of himself.  
   
“What are you getting at?” Reo said, into the pause. There was an edge to his voice. Seijuro remembered that as an Uncrowned King, even Reo must have chafed under the long shadow cast by the Generation of Miracles.  
   
Seijuro stood up, looked down at his friend. “I respect you, Reo. I respect every one of my worthy opponents. It is true; I am always aware of my greater talent. At Teiko, talent was in many ways our downfall. But, nonetheless, there is something about victory that I have come to realize. Isamu showed it to me.”  
   
In front of him, Reo stiffened, and Seijuro understood that the expression on his face must be something terrifying. Shuzo, with his intuitive awareness of people, had turned to look at him. Seeing Reo’s position relative to Seijuro, his co-captain’s gaze darkened and he started towards them.  
   
Seijuro smiled. “Victory is not an absolute. It is not destiny. It is a zero-sum game, but it is not a final one. That I have lost does not mean that I was wrong. It, very simply, means that I have lost. There is no greater meaning. I will win the next time.”  
   
Shuzo had reached Reo’s side. He stood directly opposite Seijuro, body loose rather than tense, but eyes wary. None of that showed in his voice. “If you’re done with your dinner, come help with dessert. Marshmallows don’t toast themselves.”  
   
Seijuro did not look away from Reo. “The same logic applies to talent. To rephrase in my own words something that Shintaro is very fond of saying. If I am absolute, it is because I make myself so. I do not need to enjoy basketball to win at it.”  
   
“Seriously,” Shuzo said. “You were sat here discussing your absoluteness.”  
   
Chihiro, who had reappeared to watch the proceedings with overt disinterest, began to unwrap what looked like a new light novel. “If you’re done.”  
   
Kotaro laughed nervously. “Reo-nee. Come and help me blow Eikichi out of the water? He’s got me at twenty sticks to twelve right now.”  
   
Shuzo looked at Seijuro the way one looked at a child who had told a lie. Seijuro felt his earlier dominating frame of mind harden with annoyance. He met his co-captain’s gaze. Between them, Reo got to his feet and headed back towards the campfire.  
   
Shuzo said, quietly, “Some of what you said – it’s true. Some of it is bullshit. Just so you know.”  
   
“You plan to instruct me on the latter,” Seijuro said.  
   
It was a cold night. But sweat beaded on the tips of Shuzo’s hair and along the line of his neck. The effect of standing so close to the fire for so long.  
   
A long breath. “Not tonight. Right now, I’m sick of arguing with you.” Seijuro watched him tense, as if expecting a biting response.  
   
Seijuro did not give him one, merely walked past him to join the others.  
   
As he accepted a stick of toasted marshmallows from Eikichi, and took a seat beside Reo by the open flames, Seijuro considered that Chihiro’s point – the apparently condescending advice his teammate had given before Shintaro the tortoise’s decision to wander outside their room – was less obscure than he had thought.  
   
Shuzo had returned only a step or so behind him. He resumed his earlier standing position a yard or so away from the campfire. Arms folded, the air he gave off was of indifference more than anything else.  
   
Seijuro bit into the topmost of the marshmallows on his stick.  
   
   
   
For the Test of Courage, Chihiro found himself paired with Nijimura. The Test itself was less than interesting; Chihiro had already known it would be. Of the Rakuzan starters, only Hayama was scared by ghosts or vampires. And whatever ghosts or vampires came face to face with Akashi, who to the coaches’ misfortune had ended up paired with Hayama – they were more likely to run screaming the other way than to induce any screaming themselves. Akashi had little patience for clinging or high-pitched yelling. And Hayama, the coward, tended to do both when confronted with the scary supernatural.  
   
After making their way through the thick wooded area that had been marked off for the Test of Courage, Chihiro and Nijimura arrived back to find that they were the first ones back.  
   
Nijimura nudged his foot into the cold ashes of the campfire. “That was a long trail,” he noted, to no one in particular.  
   
Chihiro, bored, decided to supply an unasked-for reply. “They probably decided that attempting to scare us for longer was enough of a salve for their ego to put up with not being able to scare us at all.”  
   
Nijimura’s white and green sneakers came up blackened from the soot. He looked at Chihiro, and smirked. “You have a sharp tongue, don't you?”  
   
“Are you complaining?” Chihiro said, tugging off his long-sleeved sweater and dropping it on a large rock. The walk had made him sweat.  
   
“Not really.” Disinterest returned.  
   
They sat in silence. Chihiro tilted his head towards the sky. The moon was full and bright. The air was alive with the sounds of the nearby forest.  
   
His life was a light novel. No, worse, it was a manga. It made Chihiro feel distinctly bad-tempered. He looked down, kicked at a pebble on the ground.  
   
Nijimura said, “How long were you listening? You and the others.”  
   
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the guy meant.  
   
Chihiro shrugged. “Long enough. Hayama was the longest. Mibuchi went to look for him, and I tagged along.”  
   
“Right.”  
   
A single day. One day of training camp, and Chihiro wanted to rip something to shreds. He braced his foot against a larger rock. Too large to send flying, but good enough to kick repeatedly. “You and Akashi – I hate people like you. Always twisted up over something. Have I ever told you that?”  
   
Nijimura, who had given up on nudging the cold campfire and sprawled on the ground instead, legs stretched out and arms braced behind him, gave him a singularly unimpressed look.  
   
Chihiro glared right back, picked up one of the water bottles the hotel staff had provided on a table set up at the edge of the clearing, and unscrewed the cap to take a long drink. The water was cool in his mouth.  
   
“I confessed to him. Sei.” Nijimura said, mildly.  
   
The knee-jerk choking that Chihiro engaged in – that Nijimura had probably timed, the bastard – was enough to bring tears to his eyes.  
   
“He rejected me, obviously.”  
   
Chihiro thought about Hayama’s insistence that Nijimura and Akashi were dating. The hope that had been clear in the idiot’s voice. His fingers tightened around the water bottle.  
   
Nijimura took his weight off his arms, brought them around to rest on his knees instead. He wasn’t looking at Chihiro.  
   
“You want me to tell you why,” Chihiro said, flatly. Despite himself, it was difficult to keep the anger from his voice. “Akashi freaked, didn’t he? And you want me to tell you why.”  
   
Now that he was beginning to cool down, the temperature in the clearing was low enough that Chihiro felt cold. He picked up his sweater and pulled it over his head.  
   
Nijimura had shifted his position to fully face Chihiro. His sharp grey eyes were bright in the darkness. Slowly, he brought one knee up and rested an arm across the top of it. “Sei will tell me when he wants to tell me.”  
   
“Then why are you talking to me?”  
   
“Can’t get phone reception up here.”  
   
The two things weren’t fucking related.  
   
Nijimura moved his head to the side. Glanced at the forest. “Someone’s coming.”  
   
Unwillingly, Chihiro followed his gaze.  
   
Mibuchi and Nebuya emerged from the trees.  
   
Nijimura asked them if they had seen Akashi and Hayama.  
   
Chihiro only realized a little later that their conversation, if they had been having one, had been effectively shut down. For some reason, the realization made him just a little more angry than it should have.  
   
   
   
Seijuro found his co-captain in the room he had been assigned to share with Eikichi. It took only a look to send Eikichi away.  
   
Shuzo, now wearing a jacket over his clothes, regarded Seijuro for a moment before shaking his head. “I can’t do this here. Let’s go outside.”  
   
The night air was colder than it had been when the coaches had sent them inside after the Test of Courage.  
   
Shuzo seemed not to feel it. Once outside the doors of the small hotel, he turned around and looked Seijuro in the eye. “You wanted to talk.”  
   
In this moment, with the darkness around them, with Shuzo standing tense in front  of him, it occurred to Seijuro that he had not, in fact, given any real thought to what he would say. He had ruminated on his own overreaction to Shuzo’s revelation; he had talked to Reo and Hayama about unrelated things; and he had not planned this at all.  
   
But Shuzo’s gaze – now that they were alone, it had regained some of that alien, angry, painful fragility that Seijuro had seen in the moment that his teammate had faltered. Unable to articulate, finally, publicly, the decision that he had made.  
   
Shuzo had given of himself, because he did not understand why Seijuro would reject him in the way that he had. If his ex-captain had not felt himself pressed into a corner, Seijuro knew, it was likely that that second revelation would never have come. Like Seijuro himself, Shuzo did not take failure lightly.  
   
There were a lot of things that Seijuro could say, in this moment. He could apologise again for his uncalled-for viciousness. He could address another problem, and say: You did not kill your father; I know you, and you would have made the decision you were certain he wanted. A third option – he could tell Shuzo that his feelings were returned. Seijuro had understood his own attraction to Nijimura Shuzo long before the moment when the object of that attraction had realized that he reciprocated Seijuro’s affections. It was simply something that he had chosen not to act upon.  
   
What Seijuro chose to say, bluntly, was: “I will not tell you the entirety of what passed between Yamada and I.”  
   
A moment of silence. And then Shuzo let out a short, shallow breath, and stepped back. “How many times – I didn’t ask you to tell me, Akashi. I said that I told you my story so that you would trust me. Not so we could do an exchange.”  
   
“That was not what you said before the Spring Tournament,” Seijuro pointed out. He kept his tone even, his expression unthreatening. But this needed to be made clear between them.  
   
“That was before the Spring Tournament,” Shuzo said. The sharpness in the words was final. This was as far as Seijuro would be able to go.  
   
An instinctive anger – at the presumption in that voice – almost took hold. Seijuro suppressed it. He was in control of his own emotions. There would be no childish outburst like there had been when Shuzo confessed.   
   
He looked away, calmed himself by studying the shadows on the ground, following the shift of the wind as it moved a crumpled leaf up and across the blackened toes and sides of Shuzo’s shoes. Seijuro blinked.  
   
Shuzo said, blandly, “Campfire.”  
   
“I see,” Seijuro said, politely. He paused. “Isamu was a player of mediocre ability.” It was almost pleasing, to watch Shuzo flinch at the abruptness with which the topic had been introduced. A reaction that was neither pain nor indifference. Seijuro continued. “I believe he resented me. As a third-year, he expected to be named captain. Futile, of course. There were better candidates. Nontheless, he resented me. More accurately, he became obsessed with me.”  
   
A flicker of recognition.  
   
Seijuro nodded. “I believe your brother mentioned something to that effect. On the train. Perhaps he mentioned it to you again.”  
   
Shuzo’s response was to scowl. It sharpened the line of his jaw, brought out the dark grey of his irises.  
   
It was interesting, Seijuro thought, how much more he noticed about Shuzo’s physical attractiveness when he allowed himself to notice.  
   
“Isamu, I am sure you know, is not notable for his intelligence. What he does understand, however, is how to be cruel.” Unconsciously, Seijuro felt his hands clench. He forced them to relax. “The day of his planned assault, he confessed to me that he – had feelings. Insisted that they were genuine.”  
   
The riot of emotions on Shuzo’s face was easily distinguished. Seijuro picked out one in particular – guilt – that incited a surge of anger. He said, sharply, “It had nothing to do with you.”  
   
The way Shuzo held himself was still, unmoving.  
   
Seijuro tired of this conversation. He pushed the anger back, the annoyance. And said, making each word ring clear as a command, “Do you pity me?”  
   
Shuzo snapped his gaze up to look at him. “What,” he said. There was impatience in the response.  
   
Seijuro was also feeling impatient. He held his ex-captain’s gaze. “Answer the question, Shuzo.”  
   
“You’re testing me.”  
   
There were times when that determination was merely irritating. Seijuro said nothing, only waited.  
   
Shuzo bit out. “No. I don’t fucking pity you.”  
   
“Do you think you are responsible for me?”  
   
A longer pause. And then, “No.”  
   
“Tell me again. What you came to my room to say.”  
   
The beat of quiet was shorter this time. Shuzo moved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. His expression had gone from impatient to bored. “If this is your idea of screwing with me, Akashi,” he said, coolly, “I am going to ask you to stop.”  
   
Seijuro made his own voice soft. “Tell me again.”  
   
There was none of the uncertainty that had been present when Shuzo first confessed. That fumbling, half-angry, half-fearful rush of words. Seijuro had not expected it.  
   
“I like you.” Simple, direct, with just an edge of distrust.  
   
Seijuro nodded, once. “I accept.”


End file.
